Everything They Told You Is Wrong

EVERYTHING
THEY TOLD YOU

IS WRONG
AN ANXIETY CULTURE ANTHOLOGY
How to Build Your Own
Personal Media empire
Everything They Told You is Wrong, by Brian Dean, published

by Anxiety Culture Publications, October 2002, © Brian Dean.
For further information click: www.anxietyculture.com
Everything They Told You is Wrong
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ....................................10
HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN
PERSONAL MEDIA EMPIRE ...................... 10
PART ONE:
DIY MEDIA ...................... 12
ELECTRONIC PAMPHLETEERING ................13
ISOLATION ............................................. 15
WORK AND ORIGINAL SIN ......................... 15
ORIGINAL SIN AND TECHNOPHOBIA .............. 16
I’M NO GOOD ........................................ 16
TWO CLICHÉS ........................................ 17
THE “FREE MARKET” AND THE “NEW AGE” ... 17
THE COST OF LIVING ............................... 18
LAW OF THE JUNGLE ............................... 18
ANTI-CONSUMERIST MYTH NO. 1 ............... 19
INDULGE LAZINESS OR SUFFER APATHY ........ 21
INTERNAL RESISTANCE .............................. 21
TEETH GRINDING .................................... 21
INTERNAL DISTRACTION ............................. 22
HIT SQUADS .......................................... 22
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INSIDIOUS STRESS ................................... 23

LABOUR SAVING ..................................... 24
SERIOUS BREAKFAST ............................... 25
WORK ETHIC LAZINESS ............................ 25
EVIL EVERYWHERE SYNDROME ................... 26
FEAR OF TECHNOLOGY ............................. 27
ECONOMICS AND PSYCHOLOGY .................... 28
STARVING ARTISTS .................................. 30
REWARDS OF THE MARKET ........................ 30
DEFINITION OF A GENUINE ARTIST
IN A MARKET ECONOMY ......................... 30
CONTRADICTIONS .................................... 31
GORE, BUSH AND NADER ......................... 33
ECONOMIC CONTRADICTION ....................... 34
NOBODY IS INTELLECTUALLY IMMUNE ............ 34
YOUR VALUE HIERARCHY .......................... 35
CRAP MANAGERS .................................... 36
HUMAN RIGHTS ...................................... 37
DESTRUCTIVE SELF-PRESERVATION .............. 38
PRETEND FREE ENTERPRISE ...................... 39
USURY ................................................. 40
“RECESSION” ......................................... 40
TRICKLE-UP FEAR .................................. 41
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WORK AND COMPETITION .......................... 41

OBSTACLES TO CHANGE ........................... 42
INVISIBLE POVERTY .................................. 43
MORAL ARGUMENTS OF ANTI-CONSUMERISM .. 44
PITY .................................................... 45
THE REAL BIO-TERRORISTS ....................... 47
DOCTORS ON DRUGS ............................... 48
PERENNIAL FEARS ................................... 48
ANTI-CONSUMERIST MYTH NO. 4 ................ 49
CONFUSING “SIMPLICITY” WITH POVERTY ....... 50
GUILT COMPLEX ..................................... 50
THE SECRET OF SUCCESS ......................... 51
NEWSPAPERS ATTACK THE IDLE .................. 52
DECONSTRUCTING CRAP TV REPORTING ....... 53
VIRTUAL HUMAN CONTACT ........................ 53
POLITICAL HUMOUR ................................. 54
MANAGERS WANT TO WORK LESS ............... 54
THE WRONG HUMAN RIGHTS? ................... 55
A MODEST PROPOSAL .............................. 56
A “CHRISTIAN” PARABLE ........................... 57
SPECULATIVE ECONOMICS ......................... 59
FAMILY SELF-INTEREST ............................ 60
ARGUING WITH ILL-INTENTIONED FOOLS ........ 61
ARGUING WITH WELL-INTENTIONED FOOLS ..... 62
TWO TYPES OF SELF-RELIANCE ................... 63
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WATCH OUT! ......................................... 63

WHO PAYS? .......................................... 64
PART TWO:
PUBLISHED LETTERS ...... 65
WRITING TO NEWSPAPERS ......................66
NEWS OF THE WORLD .............................. 68
RADIO TIMES ......................................... 68
FORTEAN TIMES ..................................... 69
.NET .................................................... 70
FINANCIAL TIMES .................................... 71
THE INDEPENDENT .................................. 71
FORTEAN TIMES (2)................................. 72
THE SUN .............................................. 73
THE GUARDIAN ...................................... 73
THE CHRONICLE ..................................... 74
THE GUARDIAN (2) ................................. 75
RADIO TIMES (2) .................................... 76
THE IDLER ............................................ 77
THE INDEPENDENT (2) ............................. 79
BBC RADIO 4 PM NEWS ........................ 79
THE GUARDIAN (3) ................................. 80
THE SUN (2) ......................................... 82
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THE SUN (3) ......................................... 82

THE GUARDIAN (4) ................................. 82
THE DAILY EXPRESS & THE INDEPENDENT .... 83
BBC RADIO 4 TODAY (ONLINE) .................. 83
THE INDEPENDENT .................................. 84
.NET (2) ............................................... 84
LOCAL NEWSPAPERS ................................ 85
PART THREE:
INTERVIEWS ......................... 88
BBC RADIO WALES INTERVIEW ...............89
INTERVIEW WITH THE FACE ....................95
INTERVIEW WITH THE INDEPENDENT ........ 107
BASIC INCOME FORUM ........................ 109
CHANNEL 4: “FRONTAL” ..................... 114
PART FOUR:
BL~ISS BULLETIN
OF LEISURE .................. 118
FAKE ORGANISATIONS ............................ 119
BL~ISS ............................................ 120
THE END OF WORK .............................. 121
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FUTURE HISTORY OF THE

INDEPENDENT SPACE SECTOR ................ 122
LEISURE IN SPACE ................................ 123
THE WORKERLESS SOCIETY ..................... 124
THE INDEPENDENT SPACE SECTOR ............ 126
PLANET-SURFACE UNEMPLOYMENT ............ 127
PART FIVE:
PUBLISHED ARTICLES .. 129
ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS ......... 130
NO SHORTAGE OF ALTERNATIVES .............. 130
BASIC INCOME ..................................... 130
GUARANTEED INCOME ............................ 132
NEGATIVE INCOME TAX .......................... 133
WILLINGNESS TO WORK? ........................ 133
ZERO-INTEREST CURRENCY ...................... 134
ALTERNATIVE CURRENCIES ...................... 136
STAMP SCRIP ....................................... 137
THE DIGITAL ECONOMY .......................... 138
THE TOBIN TAX ................................... 139
ECONOMIC “AUTHORITY” ......................... 140
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SEX ROBOTS ............................... 142

THE COMPROMISED
ANTI-CONSUMERIST ................. 149
CORPORATE WEAKNESSES ....................... 154
SUMMARY/CONCLUSIONS ........................ 156
OFFICE RAT MAZE ...................... 157
NAIVETY TV ................................ 163
RIGHT TO MOAN ......................... 171
DEBT CULT ................................. 177
ANXIETY ATTACK ....................... 184
THE PURITAN WORK ETHIC ........ 191
OBSOLETE FREE-MARKET
METAPHORS ............................. 196
THE BEGINNING OF
THE END OF WORK .................. 204
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INTRODUCTION
HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN
PERSONAL MEDIA EMPIRE
This book records my modest attempts to infiltrate the
media with “unusual” material. Since I’m not a journal-
ist or media-person, and since I have no contacts in the
media (except for a few acquaintances who produce
publications as obscure and unknown as my own) it’s
very much an “outsider” project.
I started off publishing a low-budget magazine called
Anxiety Culture, with some stickers and gimmicky
graphics. The size of my audience was dependent on
advertising expenditure – which, being a lot less than
Amazon’s, meant that the operation grew no bigger than
the laser printer in my living room. Then the Internet
happened, opening up all sorts of creative avenues for
DIY-media enthusiasts like myself.
You can now become an “expert” or “authority” just by
having a website specialising in a given subject (I’ve
been approached by several TV and radio programmes –
including BBC2’s Newsnight – just on the strength of the
Anxiety Culture website). The ease with which anyone
can fake expertise and simulate “popularity” would
delight Orson Welles and L. Ron Hubbard, if they were
still alive.
Setting up your own media empire doesn’t necessarily
require launching a magazine or website. All of the
material collected in this book was published through
other channels. Basically, in each case, I wrote down my
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viewpoints or ideas, then pressed a button to send them

off to whatever destination offered the best prospect of
publication – from newsgroups (guaranteed publication)
to national newspapers (lower probability of publication).
So this is a record of one unimportant, low-resource
individual’s experiments in empire-building. And not
even Rupert Murdoch’s world-spanning corporations can
compete with the information processing capability of an
individual human brain. I used written articles, letters
to newspapers (and magazines and radio/TV), postings
to newsgroups and forums, and, when asked, I gave a
few interviews.
I’ve extracted the best bits from all this stuff, and edited
it into this book. With the exception of the newsgroup
postings chapter (DIY Media) and a few other noted
cases, all of the material has been published by
newspapers or magazines (or broadcast by radio or TV).
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PART ONE
DIY
MEDIA
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ELECTRONIC PAMPHLETEERING
Whenever I read about pamphleteers from earlier times –
“eccentrics” who spent a lot of time and money trying to
publicise their ideas (eg thinkers like Thomas Paine,
Jonathan Swift and George Orwell, and weird religious
heresies and cults such as the Rosicrucians, whose
pamphlet-manifestos proved remarkably influential,
despite remaining shrouded in mystery and anonymity),
I wonder how they would utilise the possibilities of the
Internet. Orwell himself described pamphleteering in
terms which resonate with the aims of creatively inclined
Internet users:
“The pamphlet is a one-man show. One has complete
freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the free-
dom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the
other hand, to be more detailed, serious and ‘high-brow’
than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of
periodicals”
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The material in this section was originally written as a

sort of electronic pamphleteering – all of it was pub-
lished electronically as contributions to web forums,
newsgroups and public access projects. It covers a wide
range of subjects and although there are some recurring
themes (such as work and anti-consumerism), the only
real link between each piece is an intention to challenge
“normal” consensus viewpoints.
Extraneous content (eg references to ongoing newsgroup
discussions, etc) has been edited out, so that the ideas
presented are self-contained and easy to read.
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ISOLATION
I’ve heard much talk about the supposed “isolation” of
people working from home (usually accompanied by the
suggestion that work in a “proper social environment” is
much healthier). I don’t feel isolated by my home com-
puter and modem; I feel isolated by having to spend
eight hours a day chained to a desk in a sterile corpo-
rate office, surrounded by people I dislike.
WORK AND ORIGINAL SIN

The dark spectre of “Original Sin” remains one of the
main sponsors of the work ethic in our allegedly secular
society. Even a superficial analysis of the language we
use to talk about work reveals that our minds are still
haunted by the idea of sin – the “sin” of laziness.
According to Christians, the Original Sin doctrine origi-
nated either with St Paul or St Augustine. Bertrand
Russell says this about St Augustine:
“...he really believed new-born children to be limbs of
Satan. A great deal of what is most ferocious in the medi-
eval Church is traceable to his gloomy sense of universal
guilt.”
The original sin (in the doctrinal sense) was Adam’s sin
of pride. Eastern beliefs (and western heresies) held that
every individual manifests the divine, and that “we shall
be as gods”. Obviously this belief was seen as a threat to
authority, so, of course, it had to be a “sin”.
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In other words, there seem to be two basic religious

beliefs about the “worth” of human beings, depending on
whether you believe (consciously or subconsciously) in
Original Sin:
1. We are evil and depraved by nature, and we can
expect nothing but eternal punishment, toil and
suffering (eg full-time employment). The only escape
is to receive God’s grace – but this is about as likely
as winning the lottery.
2. We are all divine beings. We deserve all good and
only good. We can replace pain and suffering with
happiness and peace – all it takes is the relatively
effortless, guilt-free application of our will.
ORIGINAL SIN AND TECHNOPHOBIA

One of the modern manifestations of Original Sin is the
generalisation that “man-made” things are less “good”
than “natural” things. “Man-made” stuff (eg technology)
is seen as tainted (by man’s “bad” essence).
I’M NO GOOD
Cognitive psychology focuses on “automatic” thoughts
which lead to depression, anxiety, guilt, anger, etc. You
can apply this to individuals or society. The belief in
Original Sin led to a complex of automatic thoughts,
which, when trimmed of theology, boil down to the idea:
“I’m no good”. Many modern people claim to be untrou-
bled by such thoughts, but defensiveness and sensitivity
to criticism (and much, much else) indicate otherwise.
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TWO CLICHÉS
The economic clichés: “land of opportunity”, and “don’t
quit your day job” contradict each other. If we had a
“land of opportunity”, nobody would’ve dreamt up the
phrase “don’t quit your day job” – in fact everyone would
be quitting their day jobs to take up all those “opportu-
nities”.
THE “FREE MARKET” AND THE “NEW AGE”

There are structural similarities between Free Market
beliefs and New Age beliefs. For example, both fail to
recognise social variables. I probably need to explain
this, so here goes: Free-market adherents claim that
hard work will guarantee an individual’s success. If the
individual doesn’t succeed, it’s because he/she hasn’t
worked hard enough at it. New Agers claim that healing
your own psyche will guarantee your success. If you
don’t achieve success, it’s because you haven’t healed
your psyche enough. Both are highly individualistic
viewpoints – they take no account of what is going on
outside the individual. “Success” is seen as emanating
entirely from the individual, regardless of social context.
Free Market entrepreneurial guru-speak and New Age
guru-speak blend easily into each other, like lime juice
and mineral water. Both beliefs tend to flourish most in
highly prosperous areas of the planet – eg wealthy Cali-
fornian districts. When the social context is very condu-
cive to individualism, the individual doesn’t have to
worry too much about social context.
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THE COST OF LIVING

An interesting newspaper story (Guardian 18/12/99)
shows that since 1900 average wages have increased by
250 times, whereas house prices have increased by 375
times. Worse, rents have increased by 500 times – ie
double the increase in wages. And it’s worse for low-
income occupations. One example given is teachers,
whose wages are now only 110 times what they were in
1900. Teachers currently earn £15,500 - £24,000 a year
(1999 figures), but would have to earn £80,000 a year to
match the house purchasing power of teachers in 1900.
(Note: Since 1999 the cost of rent/housing has shot up
again – way above wage increases).
LAW OF THE JUNGLE

It’s odd how competition is justified in terms of “survival
of the fittest”, whereas other valid survival strategies – eg
parasitical behaviour – are completely demonised.
Judging from the behaviour of the mice in my house, the
rodent survival strategy seems to be: idleness, cowardice
and parasitical behaviour. In terms of Darwinian
“survival of the fittest”, these qualities are inherently no
worse than “competition”. You’d therefore think that
those who base their worldview on “survival of the
fittest” (quite a lot of people apparently) would actually
admire “cowards”, “parasites” and the “idle”.
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ANTI-CONSUMERIST MYTH NO. 1

“People are dependent on jobs because of their addiction
to expensive consumer products”.
This is a very common viewpoint in forums on anti-
consumerism. My own viewpoint reverses the cause and
the effect: People are addicted to expensive consumer
products because of the unfulfilling nature of their jobs.
I base this claim on three perceptions:
1. Most people start at the bottom of the job ladder, at a
very low income. After several years the income
gradually increases (if they’re lucky). But the initial
motivation for getting a full-time job is to “grow up”,
become an adult and leave the “parental nest”. It’s not
about consumer products to start with – we’re happy if
the job simply pays the rent. It’s a growing-up ritual.
Eventually the novelty wears off, the boredom sets in,
and we start to see that jobs are soul-destroying. But by
then we’ve probably started a family and have become
dependent on a regular income (if we’re statistically
average, that is). In a life of job-induced drudgery,
consumer products start to represent the only novelty
(the advertisers know this – most products are aimed at
bored, frustrated workers looking for adventure and
excitement).
2. Studies show that people who have jobs watch more
TV (as a proportion of their leisure time) than those who
don’t have jobs. Studies also show that people with little
free time tend to buy expensive consumer products in
order to “reward” themselves, and in a (doomed) attempt
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to pack as much possible enjoyment into the little spare

time they have. As if high spending will increase the
intensity of the pleasure in the short time they have free.
Leisured people, on the other hand, feel no need to com-
press their life’s enjoyment into a few hours a week, so
they don’t compulsively buy stuff. They also have more
time and energy to do things that take time – like read a
classic piece of literature. Employees are probably too
tired in the evening to do anything but collapse in front
of a TV (and of course, this means they’re subjected to
TV adverts in their exhausted state).
We can be judgemental and say “snap out of it –
consumer products are no good”, etc, but what good did
judgement ever do? The reality is that, statistically,
people in jobs don’t have the time or energy to know how
to change themselves. Consumerism is a symptom of
this state, not a cause.
3. At the start of the industrial revolution, there were no
“consumer products” in the sense that we understand
them today. So, by anti-consumerist logic, you would
expect that people wouldn’t have been dependent on
jobs. Not so – the workers were badly exploited precisely
because they were dependent on their jobs for a survival
income. Slavery has been around a lot longer than
consumer products. Employment is just a modern form
of slavery. Consumer products function as a distraction
from the slavery, but they’re not the cause of the slavery.
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INDULGE LAZINESS OR SUFFER APATHY

Apathy occurs when we’re not allowed to be lazy. There’s
so much apathy inside corporations that employees are
sent on motivational courses in an unsuccessful (and
laughable) attempt to simulate enthusiasm. The only
effective solution to apathy is planned laziness.
INTERNAL RESISTANCE
When we’re children, people tell us what to do all the
time – and we covertly build a resistance to being told
what to do. When we’re adults, we tell ourselves what to
do (eg to achieve a goal), and then run into subcon-
scious resistance (inertia, boredom, listlessness). We
distract ourselves to avoid feeling resistance, but
resistance is not the enemy – distraction is. You can feel
resistance yet still pursue a goal, whereas chronic
distraction makes pursuit of any goal impossible.
Advertising aims to turn your resistances into
distractions – it’s about weakening your will.
TEETH GRINDING
“Rising stress at work is causing increasing numbers of
young professionals to grind their teeth while they sleep”
(Guardian 21/1/2000).
Of all work-related stress symptoms (and there are
many), teeth-grinding sounds the most apt:
The daily grind
Grinding boredom
Nose to the grindstone, etc
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INTERNAL DISTRACTION
Distraction first appears from outside (TV, noise, food,
talk, etc), then becomes internalised – your mind creates
the distraction. Then everything seems trivial and futile.
Negative mood. Impatience. Irritation. Nothing satisfies.
Possible remedy: buy a cheap electronic kitchen timer.
Isolate yourself in your room, undisturbed and quiet.
With the timer, set a 15-30 minute period to practice
some form of brain-calming technique (eg a deep breath-
ing or meditation technique – get a decent book on the
subject). The point of the timer is so you don’t have to
worry about the time while you’re practising the tech-
nique.
HIT SQUADS
“In a tough crackdown on hardcore unemployment”, “hit
squads” will be used to slot each of the 1.1 UK unem-
ployed into the million-plus job vacancies. According to
the government, “there is no excuse” for people not to
slot straight into a job.
(Above quotes are taken from the Daily Mail (28/2/00) –
a “respectable” conservative tabloid which, sadly, is the
most popular newspaper amongst UK college students.)
We’re not human beings with individual needs, desires
and abilities – we’re interchangeable units for fitting into
job slots. Otherwise we’re financial liabilities to be
quickly removed.
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INSIDIOUS STRESS
A BBC TV celebrity doctor says: “Stress-related illness is
responsible for 40 million lost working days, and costs
British industry around £80 billion a year.”
He continues: “Harmful stressors share a number of
characteristics: they tend to be pronounced, long term and
beyond the individual’s control. The latter is the most
important characteristic, because it makes resolution of a
stressful problem almost impossible. Which explains why
stress is less of a problem in high-flying executives than
in people on the factory floor.”
(It’s a well-supported finding in the social sciences that
stress most affects those “low” in social status – contrary
to the popular myth of bosses and leaders being the
most stressed.)
“Those members of society most prone to stress are also
those least likely to be in a position to resolve their prob-
lem. Relaxation helps, but if resolution of the stress-induc-
ing problem never occurs, the stress continues, and the
longer it goes on the more likely it is to do damage, relaxa-
tion or no relaxation.”
“There is another option, of course – you can jump ship.
Quitting the rat race is a very effective way of lightening
the load in the short term. But it tends to be an option only
for the privileged and can cause even worse problems in
the long run.” (Source: Radio Times 28/10/2000)
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LABOUR SAVING
Human labour is an increasingly minor part of many
productive processes. Large layoffs (of thousands of
workers) already occur on an almost weekly basis. We
could embrace the labour-saving aspect of technology
and put it to social good, or, like the politicians, we can
ignore it and keep insisting that everyone works full-
time. Or, like corporations, we can regard it as merely
another competitive weapon in an economic battlefield.
Or, like the “primitivists”, we can reject it completely and
live in mud huts with no running water.
Let’s assume that we embrace technological advance.
Human labour becomes an increasingly minor part of
production (and of many services). Distribution of wealth
can no longer be based on the idea of “reward for human
labour”, since human labour is no longer a significant
factor. Obviously, this implies the need for a system of
wealth distribution which is different from anything
we’ve seen before: income not based on work.
The idea of an income which is not conditional on work
isn’t new. Various schemes have been proposed by
economists: Basic Income, National Dividend, Negative
Income Tax, etc. The idea is that everybody receives a
guaranteed survival income, regardless of whether they
work or not. (See Alternative Economics in the Published
Articles section for more details). The economic logic for
introducing such a scheme seems very convincing to me.
But I think the main objection to it will be the belief that
people have a moral obligation to work for a living.
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SERIOUS BREAKFAST
I once mentioned, in a magazine article, that many UK
breakfast cereals have adopted sensible names (eg:
Sustain, Just Right, Advantage) in place of fun names.
I’ve since found that Sainsburys sells a cereal called
Precise. Children will be eating Precise for breakfast. One
can hardly imagine the amount of psychological damage
this will cause.
WORK ETHIC LAZINESS

I regard the work ethic as the main cause of laziness.
Without a work ethic we’d have no concept of “lazy”. I
think the work ethic is omnipresent in our culture; even
while we are being “lazy”, we conceptualise that state as
“not doing any work” – ie we’re still categorising things
in terms of the work ethic. My dictionary defines “lazy”
as “unwilling to work”.
The work ethic is a man-made moral rule; a social com-
mandment – although it may have had practical origins
in threats to slaves: eg “do my bidding, or the gods will
punish you”. I think most people in our society have
internalised the work ethic. That doesn’t mean they
don’t feel like taking it easy and resting all the time – it
just means they label such inactivity as “laziness” (a
“bad” thing for most people).
Whether people go ahead and fulfil the desire to be lazy
is another matter, weighed by each individual asking
themselves: “will I be caught?” (that’s where privacy
comes in), “do I care if I’m caught?”, “can I justify it?”
etc. These questions wouldn’t exist without a work ethic.
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EVIL EVERYWHERE SYNDROME

I occasionally receive disapproving messages about the
Anxiety Culture website, although not usually concerned
with the content. For example, someone called Steve
emailed me to say he was “sickened” by my use of
Macromedia Flash (one of the most commonly used
graphic/animation formats on the net). It was news to
me that Macromedia was on anyone’s shit list, so the
intensity of his disapproval surprised me.
I have a theory about the type of stridently disapproving
attitude displayed by Steve. It’s like “Satan is every-
where” Christian paranoia. Except that it’s a corporate
Satan. Like the Christian Devil, it’s seen as absolutely
evil. No moral relativism here – you’re either on the side
of good or you’re on the side of evil. But there’s a prob-
lem: whatever good works you do, however virtuous you
think you are, somebody is going to catch you trafficking
with the Corporate Devil. Because he’s a very clever,
tricky Devil, and he will deceive you and insinuate him-
self into your life. But luckily there’s a solution: you can
demonstrate your purity by pointing the finger of accu-
sation at other corrupted souls, and thereby remain free
from accusation yourself (just like in The Crucible).
Only recently, someone pointed the accusing finger at
me, telling me I shouldn’t use GIF images (GIFs being
another representation of Corporate Evil) on my website.
This type of destructive psychology (which I call ‘Evil
Everywhere Syndrome’) is identifiable by its insistence
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on absolutes. No fuzzy grey areas allowed. Either you’re

pure or you’re corrupted with Corporate Evil. No in-
between. Not one little GIF, as a GIF is absolute evil.
Not to over-dramatise, but I suspect that this kind of
psychology has historically been responsible for more
bloodshed, atrocity and suffering than all modern corpo-
rations and dictators combined. It’s a sad irony that
many well-intentioned anti-corporate campaigners end
up like Grand Inquisitors, thirsty for blood and toasted
human flesh.
FEAR OF TECHNOLOGY
There are many malign uses of technology. But
malignancy isn’t inherent in technology. That sounds
obvious, but many people talk as if technology itself is
tainted, corrupt, suspect, unnatural, etc. That seems
like medieval logic to me.
Neophobia (fear of the new) is very widespread. It mani-
fests in various ways: a dislike of advanced technology; a
preference for “natural” things; nostalgia; sense of being
overwhelmed by change; fear of “moral decline”; the
feeling that everything’s going to hell, etc.
Unfortunately, neophobia often distorts the ‘negative vs
positive’ argument concerning technology, causing many
people to see only the menacing aspects. But there’s not
much point in comparing lists of “good” and “bad” tech-
nology, because technology itself is neither good nor bad
– it just serves the will of those creating and using it.
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If I have faith in the positive potential of technology, that

doesn’t mean I have faith in corporations to use technol-
ogy positively. Corporations see technology as just an-
other way to gain competitive advantage. They’re not
interested in altruistic uses. So who does that leave to
promote the cause of truly beneficial technology? Indi-
viduals like ourselves. We shouldn’t be defeatist about
technology just because corporations have no vision
beyond profit.
ECONOMICS AND PSYCHOLOGY

Conventional economics sees humans as having
“wants”, and as having the ability to make rational
choices, but that’s the closest it ever gets to forming a
psychological model of human beings. In a whole library
of economics textbooks it’s unlikely that you’d see a
single reference to psychology. Which is odd for a sub-
ject which “endeavours to explain human behaviour” (a
phrase from an authoritative economics manual).
The irony is that psychology has shown the economic
assumption of “rationality” to be deeply flawed. The only
economist I’ve come across who pays attention to psy-
chology is Professor Paul Ormerod, who quotes a recent
psychological study demonstrating that:
“People are far more co-operative and less competitive
than the postulates of economic theory assert rational
individuals should be.”
Economists have a concept called “revealed preference”,
which means simply that consumers reveal their true
preferences by their actual purchasing decisions, and
that the psychology behind those decisions is irrelevant
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to the functioning of the market mechanism. However,

“revealed preference” only works in economic predictions
if individuals have internally consistent preferences.
In other words, if someone prefers Coca-Cola to Pepsi,
and Pepsi to lemonade, then he/she is deemed to prefer
Coca-Cola to lemonade. The economic term for this ra-
tional consistency is “transitivity”. However, studies in
psychology show many fundamental cases where this
consistency in people’s preferences breaks down. This
effectively undermines economic predictions – the mar-
ket mechanism fails when preferences are “non-transi-
tive”.
To put this in concrete terms: If Person A spends a lot of
cash on Product X, economic theory says that Person A
has made a rational choice in comparing the usefulness
of Product X to other products of similar price. A psy-
chologist, on the other hand, might say that Person A
has been brainwashed into buying a useless piece of
crap by an advertising campaign which exploits his
psychological naivety.
Stop press: The 2002 Nobel prize for economics was
awarded to Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University for
“bridging the gap between psychology and traditional
economics” (Nature, October 2002). So perhaps conven-
tional economics is catching up at last.
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“Technological progress benefits nobody but the rich”
On the contrary, the best way to keep power concen-
trated in the hands of the rich is to freeze technology.
The Rodney King beating was captured on video. Maybe
it would have been better for those in power if consumer
camera technology was frozen at the still camera stage.
We can’t have normal, working-class people recording
their perspectives on video – leave that technology to the
rich people in Hollywood.
STARVING ARTISTS
I’ve heard the stories about JK Rowling writing Harry
Potter inside cafés because she couldn’t afford to heat
her home, but I’ve not seen any comment in the media
about how Harry Potter wouldn’t have been written if Ms
Rowling had been employed in a job.
REWARDS OF THE MARKET

The market doesn’t reward artistry or merit; it rewards
the successful marketing of artistry/merit. Successful
marketing these days requires large-scale corporate
marketing budgets.
DEFINITION OF A GENUINE ARTIST

IN A MARKET ECONOMY
A creative unemployed person.
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CONTRADICTIONS
The “mainstream” worldview seems full of contradic-
tions. For example:
The economy: we’re told that our economic system is
doing well, creating great prosperity. Then we’re told
that, as a society, we can no longer afford basic social
services, and that even the most vulnerable individuals
must fend for themselves.
Standard of living: we’re told we have a better standard
of living than ever before. Then we’re told that poverty
levels have risen drastically since the 1970s, and that
people are required to work much longer hours than in
the 1970s.
Crime rate: we’re told that crime is increasing. Then
we’re told that crime is decreasing. Then we’re told that
it’s increasing again. All in the space of one month.
Unemployment: we’re told we have the lowest unem-
ployment for three decades. Then we’re told that welfare
expenditure is such a big problem that we can’t afford to
be “soft” on unemployed people, and must create subsi-
dised jobs at huge public expense.
Opportunity: we’re told there are great opportunities for
everyone – prosperity is there for the taking. Then we’re
reminded of the increasingly “brutal” world and the
increasingly “competitive” market (which would seem to
indicate a scarcity of opportunities, as “competition”
implies fighting over scarce resources).
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“Anti-consumerism hurts big corporations”
Most anti-consumerism doesn’t target corporations – it
targets individual consumers. We have seen many exam-
ples of this on web forums, eg:
“If people didn’t buy so many consumer products
they could quit their awful jobs”
“People shouldn’t be so greedy and materialistic –
if they lived simply they’d be happier”
These viewpoints may be valid, but they’re not a critique
of corporate practices. They’re disapprovals of individual
lifestyles – recommendations for alternative individual
trade-offs between work and possessions. The anti-
consumerist ideology tends to place the burden of
responsibility on the individual consumer rather than
the corporation. If an individual’s freedom is determined
entirely by how greedy that individual is, why would a
corporation have any responsibility towards that
individual – eg in terms of working conditions, wages,
etc. Surely it’s a matter between the individual and her/
his lust for consumer goods.
The above is one aspect of anti-consumerism. It’s an
entirely different thing to criticize corporate practices, or
the advertising industry, or political lobbying or corpo-
rate welfare, etc – that’s an entirely different focus. Many
of the anti-consumerist arguments posted on the web
make no attempt at intelligently analysing the wider
economic system – they simply express distaste and
disapproval for individuals who buy lots of stuff – ie
“materialistic” people.
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To claim that the solution to wage-slavery lies with the

individual’s choice to buy less material goods is not a
critique of capitalism – it’s an argument for capitalism.
In fact “individual choice” is exactly the argument capi-
talists have always used: “if you don’t like your 50hr-a-
week minimum wage job, then you always have the
choice to quit. So why should I give you a pay rise”.
GORE, BUSH AND NADER

(Written shortly after the 2000 US presidential election)
Apparently, hardly any black people voted for Nader. Of
black voters, 90% voted for Gore.
A common perception among white, middle-class
Americans – that “there’s no real difference between
Bush and Gore” – seems less common among black
people. It appears that non-white, poor or non-American
people may experience more sensitivity to the differences
between Bush and Gore.
I’ve heard many white, middle-class Americans exclaim:
“so what if Bush wins – Gore is just the same anyway”,
but I’ve not seen many black people so relaxed about the
prospect of a Bush victory.
Ironically, people from “mainstream” white, middle-class
society seem the ones most disgusted with Gore for
inhabiting the mainstream (ie conservative) ground, and
therefore the ones most likely to vote for someone like
Nader.
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ECONOMIC CONTRADICTION
“It always boils down to the highly improbable case that
the rich aren’t working because they have too little income
and the poor because they have too much.”
(From the economist J.K. Galbraith)
I assume Galbraith is commenting on the conservative
rationale for increasing the income to rich people (eg
through tax cuts) while decreasing the income to the
poor (eg cuts in welfare entitlement).
Or you can apply Galbraith’s quote to corporate welfare.
The typical justification for giving huge government
handouts to corporations is that it helps those corpora-
tions remain competitive in a difficult market. But the
reverse is apparently true with poor people – if you give
them government handouts it makes them “dependent”,
“soft” and less able to compete in a difficult job market.
NOBODY IS INTELLECTUALLY IMMUNE

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both
when they are right and when they are wrong, are more
powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world
is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe them-
selves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences,
are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
(John Maynard Keynes)
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YOUR VALUE HIERARCHY

Here’s an experiment. List the five fundamental values
that are most important to you. List them in the order of
their importance to you.
So, for example, you might list as follows:
1. Survival
2. Comfort
3. Freedom
4. Service to a cause
5. Love
That’s just one possible selection among an infinite
number. The main point is not to list your values as you
would like them to be, but as they currently are. In other
words, don’t kid yourself – if your current lifestyle ap-
pears to indicate a preference for security over freedom,
then that’s probably because you currently do value
security over freedom. That’s no sin. The only “sin” here
would be deluding yourself that you prefer freedom over
security, when all your actions indicate otherwise.
Next, try to explain your actions (for a typical day) in
terms of your hierarchy of values. So for example, if you
spent the whole morning in bed, perhaps that was
because you value physical comfort and occasional
indulgence. But perhaps the reason you don’t spend
every morning in bed is because you value “security”,
“respectability” or “control” more than you value
comfort.
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Our various internal values seem to be undergoing

constant negotiation with themselves, struggling for
dominance in our minds, depending on our physical and
mental states, social conditioning, environment,
ingestion of mind-altering substances (including sugar
and caffeine), etc – but a given hierarchy of values has a
certain stability within a person’s life (for a while
anyway), otherwise we’d all be extremely unpredictable
and inconsistent in our actions.
CRAP MANAGERS
Managers like to think they’re big on “initiative”,
“challenge”, “proactivity”, etc, and they hate “excuses”
and “whining”. But when you suggest ways they could
improve working conditions (such as introducing shorter
or more flexible working hours), it’s amazing how
quickly they come up with hundreds of excuses for not
doing it. They whine about how it might affect
“competitiveness”.
The last time I suggested something practical to a
manager was when his company (a branch of a large
corporation) was having car parking-space problems. I
suggested they let people work from home. His response
was: “I don’t think that would be good for people”. I gave
him some statistics showing that many people not only
enjoy working from home, but are more productive. The
manager shrugged his shoulders and went off to another
meeting. A memo was later issued, advising people to
share cars. No mention of working from home. I hear
they are still having car-parking problems.
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HUMAN RIGHTS
From Article 23 of the UN’s universal declaration of
Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to free choice of employment, to
just and favourable conditions of work and to protection
against unemployment.”
Somehow I don’t think the UK government’s approach
of: “take any lousy job or lose your benefits” quite meas-
ures up to these Human Rights ideals.
Here’s another interesting Human Rights issue, taken
from a recent newspaper article:
“The European Convention on Human Rights says every-
one is entitled to a fair hearing by an independent and
impartial tribunal when decisions are being made about
their civil rights (including rights to benefits).”
Apparently the UK is in breach of these laws. Unem-
ployed people do not currently have their welfare claims
ultimately decided by an independent organisation, as
they should. Reading between the lines, the implication
is that the government won’t be able to withdraw a job-
less person’s benefits without running up against Hu-
man Rights legislation. This seems particularly relevant
at a time when the UK government is threatening to
withdraw benefits as a punishment for “antisocial” be-
haviour (presumably they think making people homeless
is a cure for antisocial tendencies?)
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DESTRUCTIVE SELF-PRESERVATION
Can society reach “post-scarcity” (ie abundance for all,
and the consequent social transformation) before eco-
disaster or war returns the planet to a state of scarcity?
The latest on global warming looks bad. It’s almost as if
the current economic system is creating exactly the
conditions (pollution/conflict) to ensure we never reach
post-scarcity. Of course, that makes sense from the
Capitalist point of view, since Capitalism is based on the
idea of scarcity – an end to scarcity means an end to
Capitalism (check any economics textbook to see the
important role of “scarcity” or “limited resources” in
supply-and-demand economics). In other words, global
warming is a perverse kind of self-preservation for Capi-
talism.
Given the rising world population level, technology is
necessary for us to reach “post-scarcity”. Abandoning
technology would return us to scarcity, condemning
millions to starvation (ie millions more than are cur-
rently starving). This is something that anti-technology
groups often tend to ignore or forget.
Wars and violent revolutions have the potential to
increase scarcity. Let’s say, for example, that in the next
20 years we have an ecological catastrophe followed by a
violent movement against technology (since people will
blame technology). So people dismantle factories, etc.
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Then you’ve got two increases in scarcity: one caused by

the eco-disaster, and another caused by the dismantling
of production-increasing technology.
Any increase in scarcity makes the situation worse. It
justifies conflict and “competition” (which would other-
wise look silly in a world of abundance). Fighting for
scarce resources and for control of those resources is
the underlying motivation of the Capitalist system. In
other words, an anti-technology revolution would ulti-
mately serve Capitalism by perpetuating scarcity. So
would an ecological disaster.
PRETEND FREE ENTERPRISE

Here’s a good quote from the famous political dissident,
Noam Chomsky:
“Although there’s a lot of talk about capitalism, free enter-
prise and free markets, no one who’s actually involved in
the business world believes a word of it. It’s fine for after-
dinner speeches and editorials, but when push comes to
shove, the sectors of the economy that work and the in-
dustrial economies that are successful are those that have
a substantial state coordinating and subsidizing compo-
nent. The same businessman who will make a passionate
speech about free trade in an after-dinner speech will also
go off to Washington and make sure that the subsidies
keep flowing.”
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USURY
Here’s another good quote, from Peter Russell (author of
The Global Brain):
“It’s called usury in many of the old religions. Firstly it
makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, because the
people who lend the money are the rich people, and the
people who borrow the money are the poor people. The
people who pay the interest are the poor and the people
who gather the interest are the rich. Secondly, it’s the idea
of getting something for nothing. You lend the money, you
do nothing, but you get wealthy upon it. So those who
have money just get wealthier by doing nothing. There’s
no useful work done by lending money.”
“RECESSION”
Ominous talk about “recession” in the news again. The
last big “recession” (roughly a decade ago in the UK)
seemed an excuse for:
a) The government to tell everyone to lower their expec-
tations, tighten their belts, work harder, expect no
pay rises, expect less from government, expect to pay
more to government, etc.
b) Corporations to tell their employees to work harder
and longer, and expect harsher working conditions,
no pay rises, etc.
Then, when we came out of the “recession”, surprise,
surprise: no easing up on work, no slackening of our
belts, no softening of working conditions.
Recession? Bullshit.
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TRICKLE-UP FEAR
“Worker insecurity” doesn’t just affect low earners; high
earners seem fearful too (notice their paranoid language
about how competition is “fierce”, how the market is
“brutal”, etc. They don’t sound happy.)
I call it trickle-up fear. Professional middle-class people
look down on the poor, and think: “Shit, I don’t want to
end up like that – I’d better hold onto my job, I’d better not
rock the boat.”
So the tougher we make it for the poor (harsh welfare
regimes, cuts in social services, etc), the more fear
trickles upwards. Alan Greenspan has said that “worker
insecurity” is a good thing, because it keeps inflation low
(because workers are too insecure to risk asking for
better wages/conditions). This is an openly-admitted
economic policy: frighten people in order to keep
inflation low.
Low inflation benefits rich bankers, creditors, bondhold-
ers, etc, but is terrible for debt-stricken poor people,
because their income remains low relative to their debt.
WORK AND COMPETITION

The number of hours people have to work probably
won’t decrease until “competition” decreases. But unfor-
tunately, “competition” is an essential part of the “free-
market” religion. The antidote to “fierce competition” is
abundance for all. But, by definition, abundance for all
means the end of the competitive market (which is why
the market will probably never provide it).
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OBSTACLES TO CHANGE
1. Outdated work ethic.
2. Market Fundamentalism (eg the belief that all income
should be generated and distributed solely by the
commercial market).
3. Social Darwinism (eg “survival of the fittest”).
4. Malthusianism (eg belief in the inevitable scarcity of
resources).
5. “The Conservative Instinct” (resistance to change,
fear of losing position of relative wealth and power.)
Plus a few other factors.
The best solution to these obstacles that I can see is a
phased-in scheme of Basic Income (guaranteed income,
not conditional upon work) which proves itself, over
time, to benefit all sectors of society (except, possibly,
the very rich, who might have to survive on a few million
rather than a few billion).
Although Basic Income seems to be against all conven-
tional “free market” wisdom, I argue that it would lead to
a true free market – ie one based on true choice rather
than financial desperation and survival-anxiety. Crime
would fall, health costs would fall, compulsive (anxiety-
induced) consumerism would fall, and, therefore, envi-
ronmental destruction would fall. Free time would rise,
health & happiness would probably rise, people would
have more time to inform themselves, pursue their true
interests, actually relate to each other, human-to-hu-
man, rather than grudgingly as rushed, stressed wage-
slaves.
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INVISIBLE POVERTY
Affluent people tend not to see the extent of poverty in
“developed” nations. All they see is the omnipresence of
luxurious electronic goods: DVDs, microwave ovens, etc.
Then they probably think: “Hey, everyone has a colour
TV – the economic system must be working”. They fail to
recognise that owning a TV (which can be bought sec-
ond-hand for a few dollars, and lasts for years) does not
mean that you can afford to pay hundreds of dollars
rent every month. Homeless people may be wearing
digital watches, but they’re still homeless.
Another factor which hides poverty is debt. By borrowing
money you can disguise the fact that you are poor. (Cur-
rent average debt per UK household: £5,300, not includ-
ing home loans). Since poor people tend to be treated
with pity or contempt, most of them quickly learn to
disguise their poverty.
To better appreciate poverty, consider income levels. The
minimum wage is a poverty level wage for a family of
four. The vast majority of jobs being created are mini-
mum wage. Welfare, of course, is below the minimum
wage. According to the latest figures (as of July 2002)
more than one in four households live in poverty in the
UK.
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MORAL ARGUMENTS OF ANTI-CONSUMERISM

Someone called Doug Dowd wrote an article for ZNet
magazine, in which he criticised consumerist society in
these terms: “ROTTING”, “CORRUPT”, “DIRTY”,
“TAINTED”, “DECADENT”, “TOXIC”, “CESSPOOL”, etc.
That’s not the language of economic analysis, it’s the
language of moral disapproval. I also hear anti-consum-
erists talk in terms of “materialistic” versus “spiritual”
(or “natural”, or “pure”, etc). Again, that’s not a political/
economic argument. I see this kind of simplistic moral
language coming from both the political left and right
(the Conservative “Moral Majority”, for example, uses
identical language).
My position on anti-consumerism is to distance myself
from these simplistic morals. On the other hand, the
economic/political issue of how corporations use adver-
tising saturation through ownership of media, and influ-
ence of governments, to maximise profits whilst ignoring
environment consequences, dehumanising working
conditions, etc, very much concerns me.
It seems important to separate the two arguments (ie
moral and economic). It appears obvious that there is a
separation between moral and economic arguments,
since economic/political adversaries (eg left green-anar-
chists and right Conservative Christians) often use ex-
actly the same moral argument against consumerism
(namely that it’s materialistic, decadent, unnatural, etc).
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I’m not claiming that moral arguments are invalid, just

that they should be clearly differentiated from political/
economic arguments. Politics/economics has moral
consequences, of course, but that doesn’t change my
argument.
In fact, I think the Afghanistan situation (the so-called
“war on terrorism”) could have benefited from a clear
differentiation between moral and political arguments.
Tony Blair often said: “The killing of civilians is unfortu-
nate, but it’s necessary”. Statements like that are a
propagandist mix of morals and politics – the killing is
“unfortunate” in a moral sense, but it’s “necessary” only
in terms of Blair’s own politics. Killing civilians is cer-
tainly not morally necessary, but Blair’s statement is
linguistically structured to imply that it’s as morally
necessary as it is morally unfortunate.
PITY
It’s a curious feeling to be “pitied” – it tends to trigger
defensiveness. It’s something that poor and unemployed
people have to deal with a lot, which I think explains
why various forms of misery (eg depression, anxiety,
stress, etc) correlate with “relative poverty” more than
“absolute poverty” (according to sociology).
To explain what I mean: Everyone in a poor country may
suffer from “absolute poverty”, but there’s also not much
inequality – everyone is at the same income level, more
or less (except, perhaps, for a tiny ruling elite). It’s often
been commented by visitors to poor countries that eve-
ryone seems happier than in the “civilised” West – ie
there’s more of a sense of “happy community”, despite
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material deprivation. Of course, some anti-consumerists

might see this as supporting their claim that consumer
goods don’t make people happy. But that’s missing the
point slightly. The point is that steepness of social hierar-
chy correlates with unhappiness in a society. That’s a
well-supported finding in the social sciences.
Social-status comparison is a very strong influence on
our behaviour – after all, we evolved from hierarchically
social mammals; much of this behaviour is hard-wired
into our nervous systems. Trying to “rationalise” it away
seems like a bad strategy. It’s going to push our buttons
whether we like it or not.
In “respectable” society, social status seems correlated
with financial status. No doubt this is a result of decades
of advertising and “education”, conditioning us to asso-
ciate symbols of wealth (“status symbols”) with elevated
position in the social hierarchy.
Many studies have been conducted into the level of
income-inequality (a measure of the steepness of social
hierarchy). In the UK, for example, the 1994 Borrie
commission reported that the gap between the earnings
of the highest paid and the lowest paid were “greater
than at any time since records were first kept in 1886.”
That’s the “free market” in action – busy creating more
and more inequality, steeper and steeper social hierar-
chy. And the result is high levels of human misery, as
reflected in all those surveys you see on stress levels,
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depression epidemics, anxiety disorders, tranquilliser

addictions, etc. One UK psychologist even wrote a book
(Britain on the Couch by Oliver James) claiming that the
steep social hierarchy created by “advanced capitalism”
is drastically affecting our brain chemistry, reducing
serotonin levels, making us unhappy.
It’s the extreme winner-loser, success-failure polarities,
with money as the measure of winning/success, that
seem to be the most damaging element of this social
inequality. The reaction of pity towards someone per-
ceived as being low(er) on the social/financial ladder
seems an automatic reflex in most people.
Poverty in Britain rose sharply between 1979 and the
late 1990s. One in 4 people are now living in poverty;
9.5 million people can’t afford adequate housing condi-
tions (according to the biggest, most comprehensive
study of UK poverty in the last decade, reported recently
by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). The average level of
debt per household is £5,300 (not including home
loans). I have a file of newspaper clippings from a corre-
spondent who lives in America – full of studies which
show that the poverty situation in the US is as bad as
the UK (if not worse).
THE REAL BIO-TERRORISTS

The real bio-terrorists are those who go to work with a
cold, flu or other bug.
Help prevent terrorism: stay at home and phone in sick.
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DOCTORS ON DRUGS
One of the most overworked groups is doctors. Accord-
ing to a recent British Medical Association statistic,
13,000 practising doctors are dependent on alcohol or
drugs. The BMA set up a 24 hour telephone Helpline to
deal with the problem. A third of callers claimed prob-
lems with anxiety and stress.
PERENNIAL FEARS
We have become tools of our tools
(Henry David Thoreau, 1850)
Thoreau’s “anti-consumerist” remark was made 150
years ago. How much earlier were people making similar
remarks, one wonders. At the “dawn of civilisation”,
when the wheel was first invented, did people worry:
“Sure, it helps move things faster, but we’ve all become
enslaved to it”.
Worries about technological development have been
accompanied throughout history by worries about moral
decline, disrespect for elders, lowering of standards,
impoliteness, crime etc. Consider the following quote:
“Boys and girls are dressing alike. They love luxury, have
bad manners, show contempt for authority, show disre-
spect for their elders... they contradict their parents... and
tyrannise their teachers”.
These words were written by Socrates, who lived from
467 to 400 BC. (Socrates was himself accused of being
“an immoral corrupter of youth”). Those who voice the
same complaints today don’t seem to realise that this
“moral decline” has been perceived in all ages.
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I don’t see any moral decline. I see an ages-old recurring

tendency for people to project their anxieties in the form
of a perception of moral decline.
I think the same can be said for many (but not all) wor-
ries about technology. It seems that anxieties relating to
uncertainty and social instability have always been ex-
pressed in terms of either “moral decline” or “technology
taking over”.
Anti-consumerism is interesting in that it seems to com-
bine fears about moral decline (“greed”, “materialism”,
etc) with fears about technology. (That’s not to say there
aren’t real, valid issues in anti-consumerism concerning
resources, environment, economics, etc).

“People shouldn’t want more than they need”
Why not? Contrary to Malthusian economics, the planet
contains enough ecologically sustainable resources to
provide a high standard of living for every person on the
planet, if managed intelligently. Why should intelligent
creatures be content with only meeting needs – ie mere
physical survival? Living in a cave, dressed in animal
skins, with no running water or electricity satisfies our
needs (people survived that way for millennia), so the
above logic would dictate that we shouldn’t want any-
thing more than living in a cave. I want books to read. I
want to watch movies. Civilisation is an expression of
wants which are beyond mere needs. If you believe that
we shouldn’t want more than we need, then all of civili-
sation looks like a moral decline.
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CONFUSING “SIMPLICITY” WITH POVERTY

I have heard followers of Voluntary Simplicity claim that
poverty can be a good thing. But do they know what
they are talking about? Voluntary Simplicity is not the
same as poverty. It’s a lifestyle choice. Poverty is
nowhere defined as a lifestyle choice.
When people confuse a personal economic choice (eg
Voluntary Simplicity) with a social economic outcome (eg
poverty), I suspect they don’t understand poverty.
Poverty implies removal of choice, not freeing up choice.
If you can’t afford to pay the electricity bill, you don’t
have a choice about receiving electricity. That seems to
be fundamentally different than being in the position of
choosing a lifestyle in which you don’t use electricity.
GUILT COMPLEX
Guilt is commonly believed to arise from the unfavour-
able comparison of oneself to social expectations (par-
ticularly regarding moral codes). But if that were the
case you’d expect guilt to disappear once you get into
the habit of conforming morally and socially. Often the
most socially conformist people continue to be plagued
by guilt, even if they’ve never behaved particularly im-
morally.
All cultures have certain beliefs which are regarded as
“common sense”. Any belief which is held by a society
for thousands of years eventually becomes “common
sense”. However, common sense is not always correct
(“the Earth is flat” and “sex is dirty” used to be common
sense).
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What happens when emotion-triggering beliefs – such as

the belief in “sin” – become common sense? (eg when we
automatically regard a certain behaviour as “sinful”).
The answer may be that we continue to be emotionally
triggered, but we don’t understand why – because we
don’t make the full connection between the belief (which
being common sense, we take for granted) and the emo-
tion (eg guilt).
An example would be the belief that we should have
“respect for authority”, which many people regard as
“common sense”, without realising the history of why
disrespect for authority was not only “bad”, but a sin
against the gods, and probably fatal for the person
showing the disrespect.
Guilt arises from living unquestioningly (“on automatic”)
in a certain type of dysfunctional society with irrational
beliefs. And the remedy is not to conform, but to con-
tinually question and unravel “common sense”.
THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

Management Today magazine recently looked at the
backgrounds of the people behind Britain’s 25 top busi-
ness startups. Did they go from rags to riches? Appar-
ently not. The one thing they had in common was that
they came from wealthy families, and most of them lived
in expensive, trendy areas of London.
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NEWSPAPERS ATTACK THE IDLE

Here are some headlines from March 27, 1998 (following
government’s announcement of welfare reforms):
“WELFARE WAR ON WORKSHY” (Daily Mail)
“THOU SHALT NOT SHIRK” (The Express)
“BLAIR IN WELFARE WAR ON THE IDLE”
(Daily Telegraph)
“SHAKE-UP IN WELFARE HITS THE WORKSHY”
(The Times)
The stories accompanying these headlines mentioned
“spiralling” welfare costs – eg the Daily Mail said the
government’s welfare reform was “a bid to smash the
dependency culture that has seen benefit spending rocket
to £96 billion a year.”
Strangely enough, just one week before the above head-
lines, the official number of unemployed was the lowest
for 18 years (given as 1,383,800 in The Daily Telegraph,
19/3/98), which suggests (if you believe official figures)
that the so-called “dependency culture” isn’t such a big
problem after all.
More strangely still, the actual figure for the cost of
welfare to unemployed people is only £5 billion per year,
not £96 billion as the Daily Mail claims. That £96 billion
figure is the total welfare budget, including old-age pen-
sions, disability allowances and income support for low-
paid working people (as opposed to “workshy” people).
Welfare for unemployed people accounts for only 5% of
the total welfare budget.
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DECONSTRUCTING CRAP TV REPORTING

Once, when Boris Yeltsin was in power in Russia, I
heard a BBC reporter say the following about Russian
young people:-
“The young no longer have any faith in Yeltsin or his
generation”.
That seems a fairly innocuous statement at first, but
look more closely and you can see some quite stupid
generalisations (which seem common in TV reporting).
For example, it implies that “the young” of a country are
a homogeneous lump with only one opinion. And what
about “Yeltsin’s generation” – presumably they’re a
homogeneous lump too. We’re talking about millions of
individual human beings here; millions of differing
opinions. And, anyway, how does one generation have
“faith” in another generation? And, faith in them to do
what exactly?
VIRTUAL HUMAN CONTACT

I don’t see any sense in which the “real” (ie local,
physical space-time) is implicitly superior to the “virtual”
(ie via electronic interface). I used to participate in little
communities called “weekly progress meetings” (at
work), which were very “real” in the sense of people
being together in close physical proximity. But it wasn’t
a rich, fulfilling experience.
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For as long as I can remember, people have been telling

me that computer technology is a danger to “real” hu-
man relations. Yes, it can be – but so can trees. If you sit
up in a tree all day, it’s not going to help your relation-
ships. But you don’t blame the tree (unless you’re very
superstitious).
POLITICAL HUMOUR
A few years ago, the UK government blamed the interest
rate rises on the fact that people are demanding too
much in wage increases. The government then said that
current economic weaknesses in the UK are due to the
fact that UK workers are less productive than in Europe
or the USA.
So, basically they are saying that people aren’t working
hard enough, and that people are paid too much – those
are the reasons for the economic problems of the coun-
try.
These government statements were widely announced in
the media – with straight faces all around and not a
trace of irony.
MANAGERS WANT TO WORK LESS

According to a survey quoted in The Times (1st June
1998), one in four managers would accept a pay cut in
order to reduce the amount of time they work. More
than a fifth of those questioned said that the long hours
were not justifiable (or were only partly so) in terms of
productivity.
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THE WRONG HUMAN RIGHTS?

The following phrases kept coming up in media coverage
of the 50th anniversary of the Human Rights Declaration:
“The right to work”
“The right to a job”
You would think, from this, that human-rights abusing
nations were stopping people from working. You can just
imagine some Third World storm-troopers kicking down
someone’s door as he/she prepares to go to work. Then
they say:
“You must stay in bed all day, and you mustn’t lift a
finger – or we’ll throw you in prison”.
Isn’t the real situation the exact opposite of this? I
thought the real human-rights abuses were in forcing
people to do jobs that are unsuitable or dangerous or
appallingly low-paid? Slave-labour, forced labour facto-
ries, sweatshops, etc. In which case, a basic human
right should be:
“The right to REFUSE work”.
And perhaps another basic human right should be:
“The right to a basic survival income, regardless of
work status”
But maybe that’s a little bit too close to home.
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A MODEST PROPOSAL
The famous political dissident, Noam Chomsky, has
remarked that old ideas – conventional pieties – need
only a few sentences to communicate, whereas new
ideas take a lot of explaining. TV, he said, reinforces the
status quo, since it allows only soundbites of 15 seconds
or so – it’s difficult to communicate a new idea in 15
seconds.
For example, politicians use the word “tough” a lot – eg
“tough on drugs”, “tough on crime”, “tough on the work-
shy” etc, because they know that anyone who argues
with them, in 15 seconds or less, is going to look merely
“soft”. And to explain why “soft” doesn’t necessarily
mean “bad” would also take more than 15 seconds to
explain.
Anyway, here’s a proposal of mine that will definitely
take more than 15 seconds to explain to people. The
idea is as follows:
A universal Citizen’s Income can be used to get rid of evil
dictators.
Dictators flourish in climates of fear. This usually begins
as economic fear – people are scared that if they don’t do
as they’re told they’ll be living in poverty or worse. His-
torically, this is the fertilizer for raising dictators – fear,
survival anxiety, mass economic nervousness.
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Economic sanctions and bombs just increase fear – they

obviously solve nothing. The comedian Bill Hicks was
onto something when he suggested that if we have the
technology to drop bombs with pinpoint precision down
air vents, why not instead drop bananas into the
mouths of the hungry.
I’d take this a step further by suggesting that whenever
an evil dictatorship arises, the rest of the world should
send so much wealth into that country immediately, to
bring all the citizens upto the living standard of million-
aires. The United Nations inspectors could be used to
check that nobody falls below millionaire level. Somehow
I don’t think a dictator would last long in a nation of
millionaires.
A “CHRISTIAN” PARABLE
Imagine you’re 2,000 years old. For most of your life
you’ve been in a semi-conscious state, with a hypnotist
sitting close to your left ear. Every day for the first 1800
years or so, the hypnotist gave you the following hyp-
notic suggestions, over and over:
“You are a son/daughter of Adam who betrayed God”
“You betrayed God by being born”
“You are evil in essence”
“You are no good”
“You are lower than low”
“You are totally depraved”
“You are damned”
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These are followed by a series of instructions: “If you

cleanse yourself with a life of suffering (denying pleas-
ure) and obedience to the priests, you may, with God’s
grace, receive redemption. However, there is no absolute
guarantee of this.”
This goes on every day, for centuries. Then, when you
were about 1700 years old, the instructions changed a
little, according to the views of Protestantism:
“You may earn redemption if you work hard. There’s still
no guarantee of redemption, but an outward sign of your
virtue and redemption would be possession of capital.
Laziness and a lack of property are sure signs that you
are damned eternally to hell.” (See sociologist Max We-
ber’s writings for the link between Protestantism and
Capitalism).
Now you’re 2,000 years old and have woken up a bit.
There’s no sign of the hypnotist any more. It’s 8.15 a.m.,
and you’re driving to work. Despite a weekend of buying
nice new furniture, you still feel vaguely depressed and
unsatisfied. You don’t understand why – after all, you’re
everything you’re supposed to be: a hard worker, a loyal,
obedient corporate teamplayer. And you’ve got a lot of
nice, expensive consumer products.
On your way to work, you pass a vagrant, and you feel a
sudden, intense anger towards this lazy “good-for-noth-
ing.” Then a little later you have a vague feeling of guilt.
But once you get to your desk and have a few cups of
coffee, these vague uneasy feelings disappear, so you
can do your job.
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Later, after work, the vague feelings of depression and

futility return – but happily, a few glasses of whisky
numb those troubling feelings, so that when you go to
bed you can sink into oblivion, ready for another early
morning start. “Original sin” means absolutely nothing
to you.
SPECULATIVE ECONOMICS
Welfare was probably invented by the rich to keep
money circulating, and to prevent the economy from
collapsing – ie it results from self-interest as much as
from altruism. Because, if unemployed people don’t have
money, how can they buy things? Welfare is how you
keep the economy functioning under conditions of reces-
sion or depression. Companies don’t want their custom-
ers to starve, they want them to keep the habit of
“consuming”. Most welfare money isn’t “lost” – it goes
straight back into the economy, spent on cheap home
produce, utilities and rent.
Welfare is often described (by those who oppose it) as
“taking without giving”. In monetary terms this is a false
argument. Apart from saved/invested money, we all give
money to the same extent that we take it. Welfare recipi-
ents take welfare money and then give it all away in
spending. (Usually they give it to companies which pay
the salaries of taxpayers). In purely monetary terms,
welfare recipients probably “give” a greater proportion of
their income than taxpayers (since they rarely save or
invest).
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This is obviously a hocus-pocus argument, but then our

economic system is based on hocus-pocus. If you wish
to avoid the hocus-pocus and talk in terms of “real
wealth” (rather than money), and of earning the rewards
of real wealth, and of making such reward conditional
upon earning (eg abolishing welfare), then you have to
be consistent in your argument. As Adam Smith pointed
out, labour (“earning”) is the true measure of the price
of real wealth. The other components of price – profit,
interest and land rent – are not made through earning
but through forms of usury. Therefore, the argument for
removing welfare because it’s unearned must logically
extend to removing all components of profit, interest and
land rent from the economy also. How many anti-welfare
advocates are committed to such a revolutionary eco-
nomic upheaval?
FAMILY SELF-INTEREST
By definition, “decent” people aren’t supposed to be
selfish. But we live in a competitive society which
favours the free-market doctrine of self-interest.
Competition means applied selfishness.
Career-striving to earn money for luxury status symbols
is supposedly “selfless” when you’re a parent – because
it’s all for “the family”. And “selfless” parents think
they’re justified in lecturing their kids about the
inappropriateness of selfishness. And these parents
wonder why children become rebellious and resentful in
their teens.
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ARGUING WITH ILL-INTENTIONED FOOLS

The following rant was posted to an Internet forum set
up to discuss themes from the TV show of UK comedian
and activist Mark Thomas, and was presumably in-
tended to provoke hostility:
“There shouldn’t be any welfare handouts – period. Why
should I work hard and better myself so that I can give
money indirectly to a load of scroungers and lazy bas-
tards. If someone is unable to fend for themselves then
that is just too bad. It’s not my fault they were born thick
or had bad parents, who are more interested in stone
cladding and lottery cards than raising worthwhile citi-
zens. Old folk should make provisions for their retirement.
Why should I pay for them. I have got my own family to
look after without supporting feckless people. As Kennedy
said, Think not what your country can do for you, but
think what you can do for your country!”
And provoke hostility it did – the usual descent into
personal abuse. Mission accomplished for the fool.
The best strategy for dealing with fools is to ignore them
(in physical terms, leave the room). The next best strat-
egy is to question their beliefs (rather than stating your
own beliefs). For example, in the above example, you
could ask:-
“How many welfare recipients do you know personally?”
“What percentage of welfare recipients are people who lost
their jobs due to downsizing?”
“Are you equally opposed to corporate welfare?”, etc.
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ARGUING WITH WELL-INTENTIONED FOOLS

It’s amazing how often Internet debates descend into
personal abuse, even among well-intentioned people who
basically share the same viewpoints. The problem is that
most people can’t distinguish between criticism and
personal insult. If people could just identify the dividing
line between criticism and abuse, the quality of debate
would be much higher across the whole damned Inter-
net.
Imagine a film critic describing a film as “a piece of gar-
bage”. That might be harsh criticism; it might even be
bad criticism, but it’s not “personal abuse”. But if the
film critic said that the director was “a piece of garbage”,
then that would be personal abuse.
As a rule of thumb, “personal abuse” is directed against
the person, whereas criticism is directed against the
views, arguments, creations, etc – the output from a
person. That makes sense – after all, an intelligent per-
son is obviously capable of saying something stupid. To
criticise a viewpoint as “stupid” is therefore not to imply
that the person who said it is stupid.
“Bad” language is not necessarily an indication of “per-
sonal abuse”. I’ve seen well-known critics use “bad”
language to intensify criticism. That might be bad criti-
cism, but it’s not personal abuse.
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TWO TYPES OF SELF-RELIANCE

Many rightwingers oppose welfare on the basis that it
diminishes self-reliance. It’s true that welfare diminishes
the kind of “self-reliance” which results from a life of
desperation and struggle (for the obvious reason that
welfare reduces desperation and struggle). But does
welfare diminish the type of self-reliance which results
from a supportive and nurturing environment? It seems
unlikely. Do rich people feel that their self-reliance is
diminished by having access to trust funds and inherit-
ances? Do corporations feel that their self-reliance is
inhibited by receiving government subsidies?
What type of “self-reliance” do conservatives wish to
encourage by removing welfare? The desperate self-
reliance of the criminal, the con-man, the fraudster, the
crack dealer – or the respectable self-reliance of the
comfortably affluent?
WATCH OUT!
What you put in your head is bound to affect how you
feel. Much of what goes into our heads looks harmless,
but it has a depressing effect. Watch out for the adverts!
A 1980 UNESCO report stated that advertising is guilty
of “simplifying real human situations into stereotypes,
exploiting anxieties...”
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WHO PAYS?
Who pays if everyone takes? That’s a common question
in debates on welfare or Basic Income. I think the
question “who pays?” shows a misunderstanding of the
problem. Let’s rephrase the question:
“Who creates the life-support wealth?”
That distinguishes “real wealth” from “money wealth”.
My answer to the question would be: “people following
their natural abilities/enthusiasms, building on the
staggering amount of real wealth (intellectual and
material) already created”.
The next logical question would be: “how is that encour-
aged and supported?” We can answer in the negative by
saying it’s definitely not supported by letting people
starve or get sick. It’s not supported by society withhold-
ing a basic income from those struggling financially (for
whatever reason, including so-called laziness). It’s not
supported by valuing only one type of wealth creation –
“hard work”, “job” or “quick return on the investment”.
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PART TWO
PUBLISHED
LETTERS
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WRITING TO NEWSPAPERS
Letters pages in newspapers seem the most interesting
sections of the mainstream media. The reason for this is
probably that editors feel less responsibility for the views
of readers than for the main editorial/journalistic
content. As a result, some unusual and subversive
letters are often printed. Readers say what they think,
whereas journalists and editors are conscious of how
their own published viewpoints will affect their careers –
which results in a sort of respectable cautiousness.
A few years ago, the UK’s Labour government gave a
press conference in which they boasted of their record
on employment – of “getting people into jobs”. Most
newspapers covered this in exactly the same language
as used by the government’s press release, with little
criticism or scrutiny. But then The Guardian published
no less than five reader’s letters, all on the same day,
attacking the government’s claims in remarkably
scathing terms, with descriptions of appallingly awful
low-paid jobs and vivid portrayals of Britain as a sort of
deeply unpleasant forced-labour camp. One of them
said:
“The situations vacant are low-paid, demoralising, mind-
numbing and soul-destroying, unrewarding graft in fast
food joints, security firms and the new sweatshops, call
centres.”
All of the letters were eloquent and forceful, and every
word rang true – unlike the PR syrup from the govern-
ment and the pathetic journalists’ acquiescence.
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Writing letters to newspapers can be very therapeutic

when media coverage angers you. Distil your anger into
a few concise paragraphs, then send to all the
newspapers (newspaper email addresses are given on
the Anxiety Culture website’s Letters to Newspapers
page).
Even if your letter isn’t printed, you have the satisfaction
of knowing that the letters editors on all these newspa-
pers have read your views (which might influence their
future choice of letters for publication). You can also
recycle the material you’ve written – eg post it to Internet
newsgroups.
I sometimes use a pseudonym when writing letters to
newspapers, but it’s a good idea to give a real contact
address and telephone number (they’re usually required
as a condition of publication). Of all the letters I’ve had
published, there were only two occasions when they
checked my contact details (the Financial Times and The
Times phoned me), so you can probably get away with
giving bogus details.
Surprisingly (given what I write), I’ve had several letters
published by The Sun. Since I don’t usually bother
checking this newspaper, I only find out when they send
me a prize (of £15) a few weeks later. It amused me to
see that the usual paranoid and sensationalist style of
The Sun (forever exposing “cheats” and “love rats”, etc)
extended to their letter, which said:
“... Our payment system allows two weeks after publica-
tion of letters so that any ‘doubles’ can be spotted and
payments cancelled. We know that our honest contributors
will approve, but we apologise for the delay.”
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NEWS OF THE WORLD

In order to get letters published in tabloid newspapers, it
pays to fake your identity. Claiming to be “young and
unemployed” probably helped getting this printed (on 10
December 2000). It refers to two subjects which were
heavily discussed by politicians in the media at the time.
Dear Editor,
The way politicians talk, you’d think welfare fraud and juvenile
delinquency were the two greatest threats to civilisation. Being
young and unemployed, I feel more threatened by politicians.
RADIO TIMES
The Radio Times is the BBC’s official TV listings maga-
zine, with a mass audience in Britain. My letter was
printed as “Letter of the week” in the 17-23 July 1993
issue. It refers to a scaremongering BBC programme on
crime called Crimewatch UK. Back in the dark days of
1993, most people really did believe that crime was “spi-
ralling out of control”, although in the decade since many
people have become sceptical about media crime hype.
Dear Editor,
The coverage of crime on Crimewatch UK contributes to a
climate of fear out of all proportion to the real threat of crime
for most people. We keep hearing about the “rising tide of
crime”, but why can’t the crime rate figures be explained in
detail (perhaps with graphics such as those used by the BBC on
election nights)? This would take into account factors like the
vastly improved crime detection technology and the creation of
new laws, both of which increase the official crime rate, with-
out any increased threat to the public.
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FORTEAN TIMES
Fortean Times is a popular magazine covering unex-
plained/anomalous phenomena and weird popular cul-
ture. The letter I wrote addressed a columnist’s critical
remarks about a group of optimistic futurists calling them-
selves “Extropians”. It was printed in the December 1996
issue.
Dear Editor,
Toby Howard’s article on the Extropians was the third example
I’ve seen recently of people with ‘alternative’ optimistic beliefs
being accused of selfishness. Timothy Leary was described as
‘an optimist’ and ‘selfish’ in his Times obituary (1 June), and
on a recent BBC2 Newsnight some ‘joyful’ hermits were criti-
cised for ignoring ‘social responsibilities’ (which is a polite way
of calling them selfish).
There’s probably nothing new in this, but it should come as a
reminder to Forteans that anyone made happy by entertaining
beliefs which aren’t consensually approved as normal runs the
risk of being labelled self-centred. There are two ways of avoid-
ing this accusation: either don’t talk about anything odd, or
don’t look too happy while you do.
Ironically, the epitome of normality these days seems to be the
world of business, which in the UK and the US (following
classical economic theory) puts the individual’s self-interest
above any notions of community or selflessness. The rationale
for this is expressed by Adam Smith’s paranormal-sounding
metaphor of the ‘invisible hand’ which apparently ensures that
unhindered self-interest ultimately benefits everybody.
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.NET
.NET is the UK’s best-selling Internet magazine. My letter
was printed as “Letter of the month” in January 2000.
Dear Editor,
I’m concerned by reports of a trend towards search engines
which retrieve only “official” or “popular” websites. Although,
on the surface, this may sound like a good idea, I’d like to start
some alarm bells ringing.
The rationale for such search engines is, of course, that people
dislike wading through website dross – the facility to filter out
rubbish is seen as desirable and marketable. Separating quality
from dross is, however, a highly subjective process. I fear that
by listing only official and statistically popular sites, the search
engines will be favouring large corporations and institutions –
which is no guarantee of quality content.
I assume that the “popularity” of a website will be measured
by the number of links to it. Unfortunately, the biggest factor
in attracting links is advertising, not merit. This means that
“popularity” will be largely a measure of advertising expendi-
ture.
Until now, search engines have given us a level playing field –
you don’t need to be a newspaper tycoon to put your message
out. This is what raises the Internet above the other mass
media. If the new generation of official/popular search engines
becomes the standard, the playing field will definitely be tilted
in favour of the big players.
Currently, web searches occasionally dredge up garbage, but
that’s a small price to pay for the odd gems that appear. The
big corporate sites will never give us diversity, eccentricity,
satire, integrity – content which isn’t about selling something.
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FINANCIAL TIMES
The Financial Times wanted to print this letter, but unfor-
tunately they followed a policy of phoning me to ensure
that I’d written it exclusively to them. In an uncharacteris-
tic moment of honesty, I admitted that I’d sent the same
letter to ten other newspapers. So it’s the only letter here
that wasn’t published – but it came close. Next time I’ll be
prepared to lie. (They would’ve printed it on 2 August
2000).
Dear Editor,
The total cost of welfare is £99 billion per year. Of that, £44
billion goes to the elderly. That’s ten times the amount spent
on Jobseekers Allowance. Yet there is widespread poverty
amongst old people. Many of the elderly are able-bodied. Let’s
put them to work. There’s no excuse for laziness and depend-
ence. If they can use a phone or walk a dog, they can be em-
ployed in telesales or supermarket trolley shepherding. Why
should only the young benefit from pointless, low-paid jobs?
THE INDEPENDENT
This letter, printed on 16 March 2001, refers to comments
made about unemployment by the UK government (and, in
particular, by the Chancellor, Gordon Brown).
Dear Editor,
Gordon Brown says full employment is achievable. Problem is,
half of UK jobs produce no “real wealth”, no resources or
services useful to human life. These pointless jobs (many in
financial services) have no effect except to move money
around in databases, benefiting the rich. It used to be called
usury. People actually burn up fossil fuels travelling to these
pointless jobs.
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FORTEAN TIMES (2)

Here’s another letter I had published by Fortean Times (in
their March 1998 issue). It begins by commenting on a
previous article in the magazine.
Dear Editor,
Les Prince made a very interesting comparison of religious cult
members and corporate employees. I think there’s more to this
than meets the eye.
The beliefs which underlie our work ethic are thought to origi-
nate with Protestant sects such as the Calvinists and Puritans.
According to Ashton’s History of the Industrial Revolution,
Quakers, Presbyterians, Wesleyans and other nonconformist
religious cults were greatly over-represented among the early
industrialists. Our modern obsession at work – with deadlines,
haste and urgency – can be traced to the Puritans’ perception
of there being a perilously short time in which to build God’s
Kingdom on Earth.
We tend to see cult members as weak, gullible types, manipu-
lated into performing actions which aren’t in their best inter-
est. We, on the other hand, are in control of our lives. That’s
why, as employees, we spend most of our waking hours per-
forming tasks that bore and frustrate us. According to a recent
BSA (British Social Attitudes) survey, 60 per cent of employees
dislike their jobs, feel stressed and underpaid, and see their
work as pointless.
Our normal, respectable society could be viewed as a crazy
work cult which persecutes anyone not sharing its unhealthy
obsession with toil. Instead of mass suicides, we have the slow
torture of boredom and bureaucracy. In fact, working as an
employee can be as dangerous as joining a cult. A recent
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Department of Health report, Mental Health and Stress in the

Workplace, revealed that people who work more than 48
hours per week have double the risk of coronary heart disease.
Personality assessment techniques have long been used in
industry to ensnare a stable supply of obedient, work-orien-
tated employee-slaves.
THE SUN
I feel very proud to have letters printed by The Sun (this
one on 26 July 2000). I sent it in the midst of yet another
overblown media scare over paedophiles. And I received a
£15 prize (I guess that The Sun, unlike most other news-
papers, needs to provide a financial incentive to its read-
ers, most of whom find difficulty in stringing more than
two sentences together).
Dear Editor,
On average, less than ten children are killed each year by
strangers in England and Wales, according to government
figures. Road accidents, however, kill or seriously injure several
thousand children every year. The media obsession with
paedophiles distorts perceptions of risks to children.
THE GUARDIAN
This letter (published on 12 January 2000) commented on
the flu epidemic sweeping through Britain at the time.
Dear Editor,
Last year’s Government clamp-down on “sick-note culture”
was regrettable. Taking time off sick is seen as a bad career
move, with the result that everyone in the office catches flu.
My advice: prevention is better than cure, so call in sick before
you get ill.
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THE CHRONICLE
This was one of several letters I had published in my local
weekly newspaper in the late nineties. They print virtually
anything – in fact most letters, from most people, seem to
complain about dog turds on the pavement and rude taxi
drivers. I think the editor liked my letter, as it was printed
at the top of the letters page, with a big headline, saying:
“Stop the Alarms”.
Dear Editor
As I write, yet another burglar alarm is wailing in the back-
ground, hurting my eardrums. When did we all decide it was
necessary to install these demonic devices?
For the last five years, the local burglary rate has decreased
each year by about 30%, yet people continue to install burglar
alarms. My advice is: disconnect the alarm, stop watching
Crimewatch UK and get a life. Despite what the scaremongers
say, crime is definitely not escalating. Even if you’re sceptical
about short-term crime statistics, there is strong evidence that
crime is less common now than 100 or 200 years ago (those
who doubt this should spend a few years researching the
historic data on crime).
The murder rate is the same now as it was in 1857. According
to government statistics, only six children are killed each year
by strangers, on average – more are killed by parents. It only
seems that there are more of these “stranger-danger” murders
because the newspapers wallow in every single case. The risk
to children has actually fallen by a third since 1988.
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Only one in 4,000 elderly women will be attacked, yet more

than a third fear going outside their own homes. Statistics like
these tend to be reliable, unlike the overall crime rate, which is
often criticised for being unreliable. There are far greater risks
in life than crime: car crashes, health problems, workplace
accidents, etc. The risk of a car crash is 50 times greater than
the risk of serious crime.
Politicians point to crime more than other risks simply because
it’s politically advantageous to do so – it offends nobody. If,
however, they pointed to more common risks, eg workplace
accidents and stress-related illness, they’d make powerful
enemies in the corporate sector. Advertisers love scaremonger-
ing TV programmes because they boost sales of insurance
policies, alarms, security devices, vehicle recovery services,
mobile phones, etc. There are many groups with vested com-
mercial/political interests in making you afraid of crime. So I
ask you: don’t succumb to their fearful propaganda.
And turn off that alarm which is hurting my ears.
THE GUARDIAN (2)

A government press release about the “success” of the
New Deal welfare-to-work scheme boasted about all the
jobs it had created. My letter (published on 15 July 2000)
was an attempt to expose the public cost of this “success”.
Dear Editor,
The New Deal has created 50,000 jobs which otherwise
wouldn’t exist. But it cost over £5 billion to set up. That means
each job created cost the taxpayer £100,000.
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RADIO TIMES (2)

My second letter published in Radio Times (25 September
1999 issue) was in response to a BBC programme called
The Eyes of a Child, which was billed as a documentary
on child poverty in Britain.
Dear Editor,
The Eyes of a Child was supposed to be about poverty but it
seemed merely an excuse to show children confessing shock-
horror “antisocial behaviour.” In one interview, a boy who
looked about four years old gleefully described how he “hot-
wires” cars. Yeah, right, and his mother sprinkles heroin on his
cornflakes.
This wasn’t about poverty, it was about programme-makers
getting young children to utter TV-appropriate soundbites.
Gullible viewers will have been led to think the issue is moral
(this is the usual reaction when people are shown images of
delinquency), and will consequently have no insight into the
causes/effects of poverty.
(Note: Radio Times edited out the last sentence. I’ve in-
cluded it, since it contained the main point of my letter).
The following week, Radio Times published a reader’s
letter responding to mine, which not only misrepresented
my views, but also attacked me personally (in a polite way
of course – this is a BBC magazine):
Dear Editor
I am writing in protest to Brian Dean’s letter (RT, 25 Septem-
ber) on Eyes of a Child, in which he expressed contempt for
the depiction of “TV-appropriate soundbites” and “shock-
horror antisocial behaviour”.
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My mother has taught at an inner-city Bradford school since

before I was born and her pupils in the past have ranged from
heroin babies to 13-year-old pimps. From her experience, I
know that children like those shown in the documentary do
exist.
Also, I have been taught not to make assumptions about
people, but I feel compelled to ask: which suburb of Chester is
Mr Dean from?
Laura Webster
Funny – I thought I’d criticised a TV programme, but I find
myself accused of being a suburb-dweller who denies the
existence of extremes of social deprivation. The moral, I
suppose, is that not only can you not trust editors to print
your letter intact (in a way that doesn’t distort your views),
but neither can you trust them to not to print responses to
something you didn’t actually say.
THE IDLER
The whole of this letter, including the postscript, was pub-
lished in the August-September 1998 edition of the Idler.
Dear Idler,
Did anyone notice the weird contradiction between those
newspaper headlines blaming “spiralling” welfare costs on the
“workshy”, and the official unemployed count showing the
lowest figure for 18 years.
According to the DSS’s own figures, only 9 percent* of welfare
expenditure goes on the unemployed, and that apparently
includes benefit fraud.
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In fact, welfare spending isn’t spiralling out of control. During

the four terms of Tory government, welfare spending rose,
relative to GDP [Gross Domestic Product], by only 2.5 percent –
a small amount, given an ageing population, two recessions
and the falling wages of the low-paid. Britain is near the bot-
tom of the league table of developed nations in terms of
welfare spending. In the EU, only Portugal, Ireland and Greece
spend less on welfare.
So why this frenzied media attack on people without jobs? To
me, it sounds like the imposition of an outdated and unhealthy
Puritan morality. But maybe it also serves to distract us from
the real “scandals” such as the billions lost through the gaping
loopholes in the tax system which make tax virtually optional
for the super-rich.
Whatever the reasons for the increasing attacks on the idle, at
least we can see that the economic justifications for these
attacks are completely without foundation.
PS. Did you know that the government’s advertising budget for
their New Deal welfare-to-slavery scheme is £18 million (of
taxpayers’ money). The total cost of the scheme is £5.2 billion.
The total annual welfare expenditure on the unemployed is a
mere £8.2 billion*, from a total annual welfare budget of
£96.7 billion* (according to DSS figures). Keep up the great
stuff in the Idler.
* The current figures, as at 2002: approximately 5 percent
(about £5 billion) of the total welfare budget (approxi-
mately £100 billion) goes on the unemployed. “DSS” refers
to the Department of Social Security, which has since been
renamed the Department for Work and Pensions.
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THE INDEPENDENT (2)

This letter was written just after the 2002 election success
of the (basically fascist) Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. It
was published on 26 April 2002.
Dear Editor,
One reason for the popularity of the Far Right in France is
public fear about crime. The British media should learn from
this that exaggerating the crime problem doesn’t merely sell
newspapers – it can have damaging repercussions for society
too. When newspapers interpret an increase in cell phone theft
as “crime spiralling out of control”, they play a dangerous
game of scaremongering.
BBC RADIO 4 PM NEWS

The BBC read out part of the following letter on their main
evening radio news programme (on 4 July 2001). I wrote it
in response to an interview with a government minister
(Alistair Darling) from their programme the previous night.
In this interview, the minister talked patronisingly (like a
schoolteacher lecturing kids) about the social benefits of
work, and the government’s intention to create a “work
first” culture.
Dear Editor,
The way this government talks about work reminds me of the
infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Makes One free”) Nazi
concentration camp entrance sign. Hitler provided full employ-
ment. Prison workshops have full employment. Coercion can
always create full employment.
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What happened to leisure? We’ve seen incredible advances in

labour-saving technology over the last 30 years, yet working
hours have risen during this period. And now government
ministers want to promote a “work first” culture. Are they
insane?
You can probably guess which paragraph they read out,
and which paragraph they cut.
THE GUARDIAN (3)

I generally avoid personal criticism, but I made an excep-
tion for TV celebrity/comedian Alan Davies. He was inter-
viewed in the Guardian’s Weekend magazine supplement,
and when asked about the highly lucrative TV advertise-
ments he was doing for Abbey National, he said that he
felt uneasy about it, but that he did them for financial
security and that he needed the money. Given that he’d
already successfully crossed over into mainstream TV and
was appearing as the star of a high-ratings prime-time
BBC TV series, I found this unbelievable. My letter was
printed in the Guardian’s Weekend supplement the follow-
ing Saturday (8 September 2001).
Dear Editor,
I’m not surprised Alan Davies feels uneasy about doing bank
commercials. Celebrities cite “financial security” as a reason for
doing ads, but the whole point of celebrity endorsements is
that the celebs are flush to begin with – they don’t need the
extra cash. Davies should take the advice of Bill Hicks: “If you
do a commercial you’re off the artistic roll call, every word you
say is suspect, you’re a corporate whore, end of story”.
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Letters published in The

Independent (16/3/01)
on the theme of pointless
jobs. It always helps if
someone else writes a
letter with a similar
perspective to your own.
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THE SUN (2)

I was surprised that The Sun printed this letter (on 28
November 2002 – during the national firefighters’ strike). I
assume that their letters editor forgot that Rupert Murdoch
(who owns the newspaper) is one of the worst offenders
when it comes to tax avoidance in the UK.
Dear Editor,
If Tony Blair thinks we can’t afford the firefighters’ 16% pay
rise, maybe it’s time to close the tax loopholes exploited by the
super-rich. That should generate around £85 billion (according
to previous press reports) – more than enough to fund gener-
ous public sector pay rises.
THE SUN (3)

Another one printed in the sleazy tabloid (on 28 January
2003). The context was a media debate about charging
college students for their education.
Dear Editor,
This country is much wealthier than in the 1970s, when most
students paid nothing for their education. The “funding crisis”
in higher education is created not by lack of funds, but by a
dubious political ideology.
THE GUARDIAN (4)

Printed by the Guardian on 19 December 2002.
Dear Editor,
So, no public money to improve pensions, none for public-
sector wage increases or students, and precious little for im-
proving public transport. But didn’t productivity rise
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dramatically during the technological revolution? Didn’t na-

tional wealth soar? So where is all the money going, and what
happened to the dream of increased leisure?
THE DAILY EXPRESS & THE INDEPENDENT

Both of these newspapers printed my letter on the same
day (13 December 2002).
Dear Editor,
The government has overlooked an obvious way to tackle road
congestion: give employers financial incentives to allow staff to
work from home. If only 10% of office staff worked one day a
week at home, we’d notice a significant reduction in road
traffic (and pollution).
BBC RADIO 4 TODAY (ONLINE)

The following two letters were published by BBC Radio 4
online (7 April 2003 and 13 May 2003, respectively). The
context is the Bush/Blair war on Iraq.
Dear Editor,
Why do you label certain incidents as “friendly fire”? The Iraqi
regime hasn’t yet proved its innocence with regard to these
incidents. Until it does, you should remain impartial and use
the phrase “alleged Iraqi atrocities”.
Dear Editor,
I hear Bush and Blair are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Given their selfless sacrifice of thousands of Iraqi lives and
$100 billion of taxpayers’ money – plus their miraculous ability
to speak truth when lying – surely nothing less than sainthood
is acceptable.
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THE INDEPENDENT
Printed on 18 April 2003 (in the context of the 2003 Iraq
war).
Dear Editor,
Let me see if I've got this right:
1. Britain bombs Iraq without UN legitimacy.
2. The British government warns France and Germany not to
undermine the UN over the rebuilding of Iraq.
Where is the line drawn between news and satire?
.NET (2)
This well-known UK internet magazine printed recommen-
dations by the “world’s top designers” on how websites
should look. I was unimpressed by the corporate mentality
behind their views.
Dear Paul,
I was unimpressed by the “world’s top designers”. They spoke
the usual banalities (“Design is about communication”), clichés
(“The user rules”) and gobbledegook (“Push the boundaries as
far as possible while maintaining a commonality in design”).
They confirmed my suspicion that “success” in web design is
currently more about conforming to corporate respectability
than true creativity. No wonder so many corporate sites look
identical. I also notice a sort of design snobbery which draws a
bogus line between “professional” and “amateur” sites. This is
usually based upon technological capability rather than quality
of imagination. And, of course, upon a set of anal design rules
(no large text, no groovy textures or tiled backgrounds, etc). In
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many ways I prefer the old “amateurish” look – it had a naive

charm which I find preferable to corporate-conformity slick-
ness.
Perhaps the only way for web design to progress is by going
through a sort of “postmodernist” phase (don’t laugh) in
which anything goes – even large text, inappropriate bitmaps
and gaudy backgrounds. Anything to get away from the cor-
porate designer-elite mentality. I’d also encourage web design-
ers to check out the “Lowbrow” art movement for visual
inspiration.
LOCAL NEWSPAPERS
I sent this letter (on BBC TV licensing) to over 80 regional
newspapers in the UK. From what I can gather most (if not
all) printed it. Local newspapers will print anything.
Dear Editor,
In the past, the TV licensing operation has targeted local
newspapers with press releases intended to frighten “licence
dodgers”.
There is now a growing campaign against the heavy-handed
practices of the TV licensing brigade. Opinion polls consistently
show 65–81 percent of the public opposed to the licence fee
as a method of funding.
The BBC prosecutes 130,000 people a year for watching TV
without a licence. Many or most are on minimum wage or
benefits. The BBC thus needlessly criminalises poverty.
The licence interferes with your right to receive information.
(You are not allowed to receive other channels that are not
funded by the licence without first having a licence to watch
the BBC.)
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The BBC is not accountable to those who pay its bills – they
must pay without choice. And it has suppressed debate on the
future of the licence fee. A senior adviser to the government
recently accused the BBC of being a “cultural tyranny”.
The BBC produces a large range of services, including at least
10 television stations, for most of which there is no demon-
strated demand. It is also launching many new radio stations
and internet/digital services. All with money extracted under
threat of criminal prosecution. Many of those prosecuted for
not having a licence cannot afford the services which the BBC
would spend their licence money on.
Greg Dyke says there is “no alternative“ to the licence fee, but
he told the Media Society in 1993 that it was possible to
finance the BBC through subscription.
A further concern is the claimed “neutral", “independent”,
“public service” nature of the BBC. For example, a study
quoted by the Guardian (22/4/2003) accuses the BBC of
broadcasting government propaganda and failing to reflect
the high level of public dissent over the Iraq issue. In fact, the
licence fee does not make the BBC independent but completely
dependent on government, which renews the fee and
appoints the Chairman, Director General, etc.
Should the TV licensing people come to you with press
releases, I would ask you please to bear in mind the above
points. Going by the polls, I think the majority of your readers
would thank you for not publishing their threateningly worded
material.
For further details on the campaign. Please visit http://
www.tvlicensing.biz or http://www.bbcresistance.com
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A letter of mine
published in a local
newspaper called
The Standard
(written under a
pseudonym).
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PART THREE
Interviews
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BBC RADIO WALES INTERVIEW

The first media interview I ever gave (not long after pub-
lishing issue one of Anxiety Culture in 1995) was for a
BBC Radio Wales show called Borderlines. One of the
journalists from the show had seen my cartoon ads for
Anxiety Culture in Fortean Times magazine, and tracked
me down to do an interview. God knows what the respect-
able BBC radio listeners of suburban Wales made of the
broadcast.
From the transcript of the Borderlines shoe:
Borderlines Host: I have the first edition of a new
magazine in front of me now, which has on the cover the
earth from space, a satellite and a supermarket trolley –
and across the inside back cover the message “Your
home is at risk if you do not keep up payments on a
mortgage or other loan secured on it”. It’s Anxiety Cul-
ture, and is aimed at what’s called ‘the anxiously in-
clined’. Borderlines regular Richard Holland has been to
investigate further.
Female voice (reading quote from Anxiety Culture):
“There is more than enough to go around – you don’t
have to fight or suffer for it, just find an enjoyable way to
receive it.”
Richard Holland: Some of the philosophy to be found
in the Anxiety Culture magazine produced by Brian
Dean. Now Brian, it’s clearly your belief that we are
living in an anxiety culture. What exactly do you
mean by that?
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Brian Dean: Well, Anxiety Culture is a magazine which

focuses on the way mainstream society tends to over-
dose on anxiety. The way we put it is that we’re looking
at the anxieties encoded in the building blocks of main-
stream culture – anxieties about work, anxieties about
money, anxieties about crime, anxieties about whether
your life is as exciting as people tell you it should be –
that kind of thing.
RH: You use the phrase “anxiety junkies” which you
accuse us all of being...
BD: To give you an example, people would rather watch
hours of shock-horror news stories which are going to
leave you anxious and depressed, rather than doing
something which is going to give you a beneficial effect.
RH: What sort of negative influences are there
then... (recording garbled) ... in your opinion?
BD: There are lots of interesting facts and figures, for
instance, concerning anxiety in the workplace. There’s a
major BSA (British Social Attitudes) survey, which we
quoted, we shows that six out of ten people in the coun-
try are profoundly unhappy with their jobs – they feel
stressed and insecure, and they see their work as not
being of any service to society. Forty million working
days are lost every year through stress. At the very least,
two percent of the gross national product is lost through
stress-related diseases. And the most amazing one that I
came across was a major survey commissioned by the
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government which shows that one in seven people suffer

from neurotic disorders – mainly anxiety or depressive
disorders. And that’s also reflected in the statistics for
the number of prescriptions for sleeping pills and anti-
depressants – the figure I saw was eighty million pre-
scriptions issued per year, which is amazing really. I
think it’s obvious that the corporate culture really is an
anxiety culture.
RH: Right. Of course, most people would argue that
though we might be stressed, we all need to work.
However you have other examples to suggest we
really do seem to want to be looking for these nega-
tive things to stress us out – like crime, was one
example you gave.
BD: Yes, there are some interesting statistics about
crime which I think say a great deal about how our fears
about crime are somewhat misplaced. The figures that I
quote are official figures from the Sunday Times, 6th
August this year [1995]. Firstly, from 1983 to 1993, the
number of children under sixteen that were murdered
each year averaged eighty-six. But the more interesting
statistic, I think, is that out of those eighty-six murders,
only five, on average, per year were murdered by stran-
gers. Secondly, since 1973, the child murder rate has
fallen by almost a half. Now, to me, if you look at the
real crime statistics rather than focusing on television
and newspaper hysteria, I think it becomes more and
more apparent that the phrase “rising tide of crime” is
absurdly inappropriate in some cases.
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RH: A lot of people, though, tend to look back to a

golden age. They might say to you: “Oh yes, you can
say that, but in my young day there wasn’t all this
crime”. Is that true?
BD: But I think it’s a question of belief rather than a
question of actuality. If you look back at the statistics
there’s nothing to suggest that people were any safer
going out after dark in the thirties or in the fifties. That’s
a fact when you look at the figures. But people will al-
ways say: “Ah yes, in those days you could go out after
dark and feel safe”. But that’s the point – they felt safe,
which is the belief. It’s not the actuality.
RH: So it does sound that as far as crime or fear of
crime is concerned, that that’s something we’ve
increased in anxiety over. Do you think that reflects
a general increase of anxiety in society?
BD: Yes. And research has shown that people who are
anxious are also more suggestible. From that you can
see that advertisements work best on anxious people.
You can go a step further and say that it’s in the inter-
ests of advertisers to have an anxious public. But it
doesn’t matter if anxiety makes people more suggestible
or not, since it’s obvious that it makes people compul-
sive consumers. So there are a lot of people who benefit
from widespread public anxiety.
RH: How do they make use of this anxiety? In adver-
tising, for example, what techniques do they use to
grab the anxious and make people more anxious?
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BD: In advertising, it’s exploiting people’s feeling of inad-

equacy, I think, mainly. It’s become a bit of a cliché
these days that people in advertisements are all sun-
tanned and perfect and beautiful – so nobody gives it all
that much thought, which makes the adverts all that
more effective, because nobody is thinking about the
effect on themselves. I think most people would deny
being influenced by advertisements, but obviously peo-
ple are influenced on a massive scale when you look at
the amounts of money involved in advertising.
Female voice (reading the ‘negative thought loop’
from Anxiety Culture issue 1): “It’s too hard, there’s
too much to do – because – life is tough – because – the
universe isn’t safe – because – that’s what I believe –
because – that’s what I am taught to believe – because –
I have to be taught rather than just believe what I want –
because – I can’t have what I want – because – I don’t
deserve to have what I want – because – I’m not good
enough – because – I haven’t earned it yet – because – I
can’t – because – It’s too hard, there’s too much to do...”
RH: Now that was a negative thought loop which
we’ve just heard, which you quote in your magazine,
and you’re suggesting that a lot of us – perhaps most
of us – are caught up in this. The question, of course,
is if we’re all anxiety-driven and propelled by nega-
tive thoughts in this way, how do we get out of it?
BD: One of the main things we’re trying to get across is
that your level of anxiety doesn’t depend upon what’s
happening out there so much as what you believe about
what’s happening. To give an example – if you believe
that the universe is fundamentally unsafe, then you’re
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going to be constantly experiencing a state of panic and

anxiety, because with a lack of safety on that scale, you
obviously feel helpless. If, on the other hand, you believe
in a universe that is fundamentally safe, then for the
most part, you’re going to feel comfortable. And if people
say “well, what about objectivity?”, my response is that
nobody has yet invented a way to objectively measure
how safe the universe is, so people are free to interpret
their safety in a way that advantages them rather than
disadvantages them. So it’s a question of belief.
RH: Right, fine. So in case we’ve left everybody feel-
ing terribly depressed and anxious, we’ll leave people
with the positive thought loop, which is the way you
feel we all ought to be thinking. But for now, thanks
Brian very much.
Female voice (reading the ‘positive thought loop’
from Anxiety Culture issue 1): “It’s unnecessary for
anyone to have less than they desire – because – there is
an unlimited supply of all the desired things – because –
the universe is abundant enough to support the pros-
perity of all – because – the universe is safe and infi-
nitely supportive – because – that’s what I have decided
to believe – because – I can believe what I want to believe
– because – I can do all the things I want – because – I
deserve to do all the things I want – because – everyone
deserves all that they desire – because – It’s unnecessary
for anyone to have less than they desire...”
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INTERVIEW WITH THE FACE

The Face (a popular glossy trend magazine) printed a
long article called Pranking is Anarchy in their October
2000 edition. Anxiety Culture was one of the “organisa-
tions” they covered. I played up the idea that “we” are an
“organisation”, since I thought that was probably what
they wanted to hear. I gave them a long, in-depth inter-
view (which is printed below) – this was used to provide
material for the article, rather than printed in interview
format.
Among other things, their article quotes a youth market-
ing consultancy firm called Informer, whose spokesper-
son says: “Groups like Anxiety Culture do farcical things
with heavy political issues which make us laugh and sit
with our need to be entertained – it’s not about dogma and
you don’t need a Guardian-reading mentality to appreciate
it”.
But it’s the concluding section from The Face’s article
that I like most, as it seems to portray Anxiety Culture as
one of the leading prankster-anarchist organisations in
the country:
“However weird, marginal or self-indulgent they may
sound, the activities of the pranksters continue to be
hugely influential, their techniques often adopted by the
very forces they oppose. ‘The bourgeoisie has picked up
on these humorous activities’ frets George Mckay, author
of DIY Protest: Party and Protest in Nineties Britain. ‘That’s
really worrying.’ Yet Luther Blissett, Anxiety Culture and
all the other groups have huge resources of creativity,
anger and an endlessly swelling band of acolytes with
innovative, disruptive ideas of their own...”
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A lot of marketing agencies and fashion gurus read The

Face in order to keep up with youth trends – so I’m wait-
ing to have some of my material ripped off by marketers
(in the same way that the Idler’s slogan, “for those who
live to loaf” was ripped off by the advertisers of a popular
brand of cider). Anyway, here is the interview conducted
by Christian Koch for The Face:
CK: Can you give a brief summary of what Anxiety
Culture is about, what your aims and manifestos
are?
BD: Anxiety Culture is about the fear and paranoia be-
hind the smiling mask of “normal” society, it’s about
psychological gimmicks and economic taboos (welfare,
laziness, poverty, survival anxieties, etc). It’s about gen-
tle subversion of bureaucratic authority and work-ob-
sessed corporate craziness. Pranksterism is an
important element – but not in the sense of throwing
eggs at rich people. The aim is to stop people in their
tracks through irony, satire etc – using as much intelli-
gence as we can muster.
CK: What does Anxiety Culture hope to achieve?
BD: There are some specific things. For example, politi-
cians see “jobs” as a cure-all for social ills. We’d like to
see this notion discredited. We’d like to see “maximum
leisure” replace “full employment” as an achievable po-
litical goal. We want to see basic survival anxieties alle-
viated by the introduction of something like a “Basic
Income” or “National Dividend”. We’d appreciate it if the
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mainstream media would begin to question a dominant

economic worldview which is two centuries out of date.
We wish business people had a better grasp of the his-
tory of so-called “free market” economics – instead of
ignorantly regurgitating simplistic “market” slogans. And
there are many, many facts, figures, statistics, view-
points, perspectives, etc, that we’d like to bring into
public awareness.
CK: What is the likelihood of Anxiety Culture
achieving it?
BD: If you look at public attitudes towards, say, canna-
bis, you can see how things have shifted over the last
decade. Newspapers used to report scientific studies
claiming that cannabis was highly toxic and addictive,
causing brain damage etc. I’ve not seen any reports like
that for a long time. The reason, I think, is a better in-
formed, less gullible public. I think a similar thing could
happen with the kinds of issues Anxiety Culture is con-
cerned with – in fact I think it’s already happening.
CK: What motivated you to found AC? And why do
you preside over the organisation now?
BD: Idealism, creativity, plenty of ideas. Plus frustration
with my job, dissatisfaction with the media, dislike of
the paranoid-competitive nature of the business world.
I’ve continued with the Anxiety Culture theme, as it
seems to have tapped into a rich vein of ideas. It also
seems to strike a chord with people.
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CK: What is your own background? (I’m familiar with

your work in the Idler – are you a journalist/aca-
demic?)
BD: I trained as an architect, then I worked for several
years in the computing industry. I ended up doing com-
puter and business consultancy work for large financial
services companies. Highly paid, but boring. Still, I got a
good view of how large companies operate, and a big
taste of the soul-destroying nature of office jobs. I quit
full-time work in the early nineties, but occasionally
went back to do consultancy work (if I could get it)
whenever my money ran out.
CK: A lot of AC’s ideas share similarities with the
ethos of Decadent Action (especially Phone In Sick
Day). Have you ever been associated with that flam-
boyant clique?
BD: I’ve corresponded with them a few times, and I like
their ideas – but I haven’t met them or collaborated with
them.
CK: Where does Anxiety Culture fit in on the politi-
cal spectrum? Would you claim that you are anar-
chist or neo-Situationist, or hard-line agit-prop?
BD: To be honest, I don’t identify myself with any of
those categories. I think there’s an axis which runs per-
pendicular to the right-wing/left-wing axis. It’s “author-
ity hierarchies” at one end of this axis and I’m not sure
what is at the other end. The reason I’m not sure what’s
at the other end is because for thousands of years we’ve
only ever experienced authority hierarchies. The closest
thing we’ve got to the other end of the axis is the Inter-
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net. Another comment I’d make about politics is that

sometimes, from watching TV, you’d think that the only
economic choice available was between Adam Smith and
Karl Marx. Adam Smith’s “classical free-market econom-
ics” is 200 years out of date; Marxism is 100 years out of
date. So I think it’s a good thing that there are these
newer alternatives like Situationism – at least it forces
people to think outside of the Capitalism/Communism
polar mentality.
CK: Why are there so many neo-Situationist groups
at the moment (eg guerrilla gardening, Luther
Blissett, Nottingham Psychogeographical Unit)?
BD: A cynical answer would be that people are jumping
on bandwagons. Perhaps this explains why some of the
Situationist stuff seems unoriginal and a bit dreary. On
the other hand I can see how the “prankster” element –
and the Situationist take on the media – appeals to peo-
ple. I think there’s much more creativity at large than
stuffy politicians could imagine.
CK: What does the fact that there are organisations
such as Anxiety Culture tell us about ‘traditional’
politics, its appeal to youth and the politicisation or
otherwise of young people?
BD: I think this is covered by what I said before about
traditional politics having obsolete categories (right v
left) and limitations (Capitalism/Socialism). Young peo-
ple want novelty and relevance.
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CK: What effect do you think Anxiety Culture has

had on mainstream culture? Where do you think
your influence is most evident?
BD: Good question. I don’t believe in “word-of mouth”,
as in “Blair Witch [the popular film] owes its success to
word-of-mouth”. Success at that scale results only from
“word-of-mass-media”. So to answer your question, I’d
have to look at the times when Anxiety Culture has ap-
peared in the mass media.
The best response I had was when the Guardian printed
a long article of mine – I received literally hundreds of
enthusiastic letters and emails. The article seemed to
have struck a chord. The Irish Independent and the Big
Issue in Scotland reprinted it. I also found that media
people began to contact me. A BBC2 Newsnight editor
phoned me about appearing in a Newsnight debate;
someone from Carlton TV wanted me to go on a discus-
sion programme about stress and the rat-race; a BBC
Radio 4 journalist wanted my input on a programme he
was creating, etc.
I was also interviewed by the Independent newspaper –
but that didn’t get as much response as the Guardian
article (probably because the Independent forgot to print
my contact details or web address). The Guardian web-
site links to Anxiety Culture on several pages – and I
noticed that the other links which the Guardian lists on
these pages have been lifted straight off my own links
page. So yes, I think the mainstream media will increas-
ingly make use of material from sources like Anxiety
Culture.
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CK: What has Anxiety Culture been up to recently?

Where have you done this and why?
BD: I’m working on an ambitious project called “Memory
Lapse”. The plan is to create an online database contain-
ing news items that contradict consensus beliefs. It
happens often: I see a news item that raises my eye-
brows, but the media pretty much ignores it – even
though it has important implications. To give you an
example – a few years ago BBC Radio 4 had a story
about government fraud. Fiddles in Whitehall were cost-
ing the taxpayer £5 billion a year, according to an inde-
pendent report. A fairly important story, you’d think.
Except that the story was buried.
Another example: A 1996 government report found that
people working over 48 hours per week have double the
risk of coronary heart disease. This was deeply embar-
rassing given the Conservative government’s position on
the EU ruling on working hours. The report was sup-
pressed – it made a few column inches at most, and was
promptly forgotten.
CK: Have you ever managed to gauge public reaction
to Anxiety Culture’s stunts?
BD: I’ve had a lot of people telling me the amusing
places they’ve applied my stickers. “Crap Job Watch”
stickers in Job Centres; “Avoid Meetings – Stupidity is
Contagious” stickers in boardrooms etc.
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CK: Are things genuinely being destabilised? Have

you got any examples?
BD: If you look at TV and newspaper headlines, it looks
like nothing is changing. But if you look at the Internet,
it looks like everything is changing. I’m not too keen on
the word “destabilise”. The changes I’m interested in will
alleviate survival anxieties – people will know they can
always rely on a survival income; young people won’t
have 40 years of low-paid wage-slavery ahead of them;
there’ll be more leisure time; less bureaucratic interfer-
ence in your private life; unemployed people won’t be
stigmatised, etc – I don’t see progress towards these
things as “destabilising”.
CK: Is Anxiety Culture associated with any other
factions such as Luther Blissett, Stewart Home,
Santarchy et al?
BD: I’m aware of their existence, but I don’t have any
associations with them. I occasionally correspond with
some of the “Neoist” people.
CK: Has targeting local newspapers had any success
(I saw the examples on the website)?
BD: I’ve been concentrating on national newspapers,
and have had a surprising amount of success. The
Guardian published another letter of mine a few days
ago. It read: Dear Editor – The New Deal has created
50,000 jobs which otherwise wouldn’t exist. But it cost
over £5 billion to set up. That means each job created cost
the taxpayer £100,000.
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CK: Ever thought about sending bogus press releases

to newspapers? Stewart Home once deceived the Big
Issue into running a story about Salman Rushdie
burning copies of the Koran on the fifth anniversary
of the fatwa and has submitted spoof obituaries to
broadsheets, informing them of his own death.
BD: I have toyed with the idea of producing bogus stuff.
The problem is I don’t really like to deceive people. I’d
never pull a stunt which would hurt or disadvantage
anyone. Gentle irony and satire is what I prefer – where
everyone can be in on the joke. It has to be intelligence-
raising, not just puerile self-aggrandisement or self-
publicity. That kind of thing is for would-be media
celebrities. There are some pranks which approach “per-
formance art” and which have a kind of poetic resonance
in their own right – but they are quite rare.
CK: There is an NHS library assistant in Leicester
who operates under the pseudonym of Henri
Beauchamp. His pranks include sending spoof letters
to local newspapers about the virtues of having a pet
lobster or covert leftist propaganda.
BD: I like that kind of thing – but it has to be well done,
otherwise it backfires. For example, I wouldn’t advise
people to put turf on a statue of a national hero.
CK: Do you seriously advocate that people should
not read newspapers, as the cynical mindset of
hacks infects the content? How are people supposed
to keep abreast of current events?
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BD: My viewpoint on this probably needs a bit of ex-

plaining. It would be absurd for me to tell people they
“should not” read newspapers or watch TV – firstly be-
cause I read newspapers and watch TV myself, and
secondly because I’m not in the habit (I hope) of telling
people what they should and shouldn’t do. But I think
it’s a good idea to take a break from “media noise” occa-
sionally – to completely avoid it, as a temporary psycho-
logical experiment, say for a few weeks. William
Burroughs talked about “the word” acting as a virus. I
think that’s a good metaphor. Language doesn’t just
affect us consciously – it also has a hypnotic effect. Anxi-
ety Culture advocates the use of psychological tools (gim-
micks) – little experiments that can bring shifts in
consciousness in environments which are otherwise
fairly “controlling” – such as the workplace. For example,
employees often seem to be in a rushed, harassed state
at work, due to constant performance pressures or
deadlines, etc. There are a number of psychological
tricks which will relieve this – but they’re just temporary
practices, not a set of “Thou Shalts”.
CK: What has Anxiety Culture got planned for the
next six months?
BD: There’s a book in the works – sort of Anxiety Culture:
The Book. I’ll also be progressing the “Memory Lapse”
database, writing some articles and expanding the web-
site.
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CK: It seems that a lot of marketing techniques are

becoming increasingly influenced by anarchist
pranks – for instance, the street teams in New York
who run into the street to disrupt the traffic, waving
placards publicising the latest record; those people
from Scanner (CHK) who stood outside Virgin with
placards saying ‘Overpriced CDs sold here’. Where
does this leave groups like Anxiety Culture?
BD: A Conservative politician (Norman Tebbit, I think)
said satirists and pranksters don’t contribute anything
to society. So it’s amusing to see corporations copy
pranksters in order to appeal to the youth market. There
are some interesting stories of advertising agencies
“pushing the envelope” in order to communicate with
cynical youth – and then running up against opposition
from the companies whose products they’re advertising.
Obviously, conservative companies are not always too
happy about the images used by the advertisers, but
they wish to reach the youth market, so it’s a difficult
balancing act for them. Sometimes they axe the adver-
tising campaign for “going too far”. It’s this state of af-
fairs which led to my “The corporate image gets a little
too trendy” postcard design. Some people say there’s
nothing to satirise any more, as the “real world” has
gone beyond satire. I can see what they mean, but I
don’t agree. Wherever you have bureaucracy, authority
and stupidity, you have opportunities for satire and
pranksterism.
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Another argument is that the corporate world is simply

“co-opting” everything the satirists and pranksters do. I
noticed recently that the ultra-trendy advertising
agency, St Lukes (they did the adverts for the govern-
ment’s New Deal) has a “Work Sucks” page on their
website – and they even have a link to Anxiety Culture!
One of the adverts they made for the New Deal effectively
says: “since the New Deal cost billions, we’d better make
sure it works”. This was supposed to attract employers
into the New Deal scheme. Not surprisingly, the govern-
ment killed that particular advert.
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INTERVIEW WITH THE INDEPENDENT

ON “PRESENTEEISM”
The Independent newspaper had a weekly section called
Cross Words, in which two people gave opposing views
on a particular issue. In the 20th March 1999 edition,
the issue was “presenteeism” (the opposite of “absentee-
ism” – eg spending all your time at the office, regardless
of actual work demands). I argued against presenteeism,
and a self-made millionaire called Firoz Kassan argued
in favour of it. Our arguments, as printed, were com-
piled (and edited) from interviews.
Actually, Firoz Kassan argued in favour of hard work
rather than “presenteeism”. He owns a hotel business,
and he said: “I work from seven in the morning until nine
in the evening every day and most weekends. Life is
about working hard and playing hard. I enjoy work. I work
for myself. As long as you’re sincere in what you do,
that’s what matters. There’s no point in sitting around:
life’s too short. The world is becoming increasingly com-
petitive. With free movement of labour in Europe now it’s
going to get worse, with people coming in who are pre-
pared to work harder. You have to stay one step ahead of
the others”.
My guess is that The Independent couldn’t find anyone
to argue in favour of presenteeism. In fact they asked me
if I knew anyone who would be prepared to take a pro-
presenteeism position. I suggested the PR spokesperson
from the Institute of Directors (but then I’ve got a warped
sense of humour). I made several points against presen-
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teeism, but the edited version of my comments which

they printed is more of a general argument against the
Protestant work ethic. Here is what they printed:
Presenteeism is not natural. People should spend as little time as
possible at work. We live by an idea that is out of date: the
Protestant work ethic. The concept was created at the beginning
of the industrial revolution in an attempt to get people to work
in factories. People were accustomed to taking a day off every
holy day, and the factory owners found it difficult to make them
come in and work consistently. The idea that you had to suffer to
be virtuous was translated into, “You have to work to be virtu-
ous.”
Technology is a big part of the issue: we’re constantly getting
more from less, so why are we working more? Production output
has trebled in the last decade, but no one’s benefiting. The old
ideas are carrying on and nobody’s questioning them, the idea
that to be virtuous you must work, work, work. In fact productiv-
ity increases among people who work less hours. During the
Edward Heath government we had a three-day week, but pro-
ductivity was the same. A study by Proctor & Gamble showed
that people working reduced hours are significantly more pro-
ductive.
About five years after joining the rat race I started feeling ex-
tremely frustrated. I had 20 days’ paid leave a year but I needed
more. I asked my boss for some unpaid leave and he looked at
me as if I was mad. I left and took a year off. Now I work as a
contractor, six months on and six off. If you ask most people
whether they enjoy their work they say yes. But if you ask them if
they’d still do it if they didn’t have to, they say no. By definition
an enjoyable thing is something you’d do whether you were paid
or not. If people started admitting they didn’t enjoy their jobs
we’d have a much healthier situation.
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BASIC INCOME FORUM

This electronic debate took place on a special Internet
forum discussing work issues (Why Work?, 12 April
2001). I was asked to defend the concept of a Basic In-
come (a universal guaranteed income paid to everyone,
without any work requirement).
Questioner: You presumably recognize that we can’t
all pay ourselves a Basic Income, and refuse to do
any work. Or are you counting on people to continue
working after a Basic Income is implemented?
BD: Firstly, let’s go back to when welfare (called the
“dole” in Britain) was more generous and virtually an
unconditional entitlement (ie prior to the reign of Mrs
Thatcher). I don’t know what the exact situation was in
the US, but in Britain it was possible to live on the dole
for long periods without getting any hassle from the
government.
I know someone (who’s over 50 now, and a well-paid
computer programmer) who lived for ten years on the
dole in his youth. He is proud of his “drop-out” years. He
says all he had to do was “sign on” each week – there
were no other conditions for receiving the dole. The
amount of the dole, relative to the “cost of living”, was
much higher then than now. In those days, college stu-
dents could spend all their holiday periods on the dole.
Nobody but a few rightwing spoilsports questioned any
of this at the time. Certainly I don’t think there was the
intensity of hostility towards welfare recipients that you
see now. But obviously all this has changed over the last
25 years.
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Somebody told me recently that the successful horror-

fiction author, Clive Barker, spent nine years on the dole
in his youth. More recently, a survey in a popular music
magazine (NME), revealed that virtually all of the musi-
cians involved in the “Britpop” scene (Oasis, Pulp etc)
spent years on the dole, and claimed they spent this
time developing their musical skills. Whatever you think
of “Britpop” (I always found it dreary and banal myself),
there’s no doubt that it brought in a lot of tax revenue (it
seems the dole, in this case, was a good investment in
human creativity).
But, going back to those pre-Thatcher years: despite the
easy availability of dole, society didn’t fall apart. Most
people stayed in their jobs. Some people took advantage
of the situation, as I mentioned above, but most people,
having families and work ethics, probably never consid-
ered quitting their jobs even for a moment.
Also, we had a “three-day week” during the time when
Edward Heath was Prime Minister. That’s a bit before
my time, but I’m told that despite all work being cut by
40%, productivity remained virtually the same. Society
didn’t fall apart.
A recent BSA (British Social Attitudes) survey revealed
that 60% of employees find their work “of no use to soci-
ety”. Having worked in pointless Financial Services jobs
myself, I can easily believe that figure. Even if all these
people voluntarily quit their jobs (which they probably
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wouldn’t), I doubt there’d be any noticeable social effects

in terms of lack of services or lower quality of life. Finan-
cial Services companies could lose 70% of their human
workers, and remain functioning as normal. Such is the
impact of automation. The only reason they don’t sack
thousands of employees (sometimes they do, of course)
is because: a) it’s very bad PR (although it’s usually good
news for the shareholders), b) they pay people such low
wages that they can sometimes make a spurious cost-
justification case for keeping them on, and c) it would
mean a big change in internal organisational/political
structure – something that’s resisted within companies
(unless someone fresh is brought in at a high level – this
often does result in huge job losses).
So, taking all the above factors into account, I don’t
think Basic Income would create any big problems, even
in worst-case scenarios. And remember, the people most
likely to quit their jobs under a Basic Income scheme
would be those who currently hate their jobs most. For
me, that more approximates a true “free market” (ie
people choosing the work/activity they want) than the
system we have now, where people feel obliged/coerced
into taking a job they dislike due to basic survival anxi-
ety. If people can make rational choices based on their
wants and needs, rather than desperate choices based
on fear and stress, we might finally have a true “labour
market” rather than a corporate-employment dictator-
ship.
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Questioner: But before a scheme like Basic Income is

implemented shouldn’t we, as a society, have a
much better idea of how it will work in practice. Or
is that just timidity?
BD: I think it’s timidity if we don’t even get to the stage
where we try things on a small scale or gradually-imple-
mented basis. Yes, we should have a fairly good idea
about whether something will work, but the only way to
do this is by trying it out in some way – to test it, experi-
ment with it in the laboratory of social reality, rather
than merely in the theory of economists (who usually get
things wrong anyway). The minimum wage is a case in
point, as is the French 35-hour week experiment. In
both cases, conservative economists swore these
schemes would end in disaster. They didn’t – on the
contrary, they’ve so far been successful. But we wouldn’t
know this if they hadn’t been tried out for real. By intro-
ducing the minimum wage at a very modest level, and by
introducing the French scheme on a gradual basis (it
didn’t apply to small firms at first), it was possible to
test these things with minimum risk, while closely moni-
toring the results.
The same can be done with Basic Income – at minimum
expense. It could be tested in a small area for a year or
two. The administrative apparatus already exists to
implement it – eg the tax system or the welfare system,
depending on the practical details of how you work it. If
you found that everyone in the area took advantage of it
by simply quitting their jobs, then obviously you’d have
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to rethink – perhaps build in a few conditions (although

the point, obviously, would be that it avoids all the com-
plicated conditions that make the welfare system such a
costly, bureaucratic mess). There are different options to
choose from. I personally like the idea of “negative in-
come tax” as a way of gradually introducing Basic In-
come.
Questioner: How do you get people to do the “dirty”
jobs if they can support themselves on a Basic In-
come?
BD: The answer is simple: the marketplace – ie supply
and demand. If nobody comes forward to do the job, the
income is raised until people do come forward to take
the job. That’s how the “labour market” should always
have worked. The current system, in which the worse
jobs are also the lowest paid is surely an economic per-
version which only torturers and sadists would approve
of.
Remember, also, that you get to keep your Basic Income
payments after you get a job (unlike welfare, which you
stop receiving once you get a job). So the purely financial
incentive to take a job – even a low-paid job – is greater
under a Basic Income scheme than under current wel-
fare systems.
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CHANNEL 4: “FRONTAL”
Channel 4 described their late-night TV show, Frontal,
as “a combination of cutting-edge music, videos, film,
technology and the Internet, dealing with fringe popular
culture”. Judging from the chaotic nature of the show
(presenters talking over each other, etc) it was broadcast
live. Channel 4 advertised the show heavily, drawing a
large national (UK) audience.
The Frontal producers contacted me about featuring
Anxiety Culture in their review section. They asked for a
copy of my “Propaganda Kit” to use in the review. I
wasn’t interviewed (I sent them a copy of my interview
with The Face magazine to answer their questions about
my background), but I think the transcript of the review
is worth including here for amusement value.
The review format was three presenters – James Hyman,
Natasha Bell and Lisa Rogers (who later became one of
those glamorous female celebrities who adorn men’s
magazine covers) – discussing the reviewed material
against a giant projected backdrop.
Here’s the transcript (the review was featured in the show
broadcast on 1st September 2000):
James Hyman: I think we all work too hard – do you
not agree?
(Backdrop changes to the hypno-spiral TV animation from
the intro page of the Anxiety Culture website).
Natasha Bell: I think we do.
Lisa Rogers: I work totally hard.
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JH: Anxiety Culture dot com – this is targeting corporate

culture. We should enjoy life more. They produce lots of
stills [I think he meant stickers] – a Propaganda Kit...
(Backdrop changes to the Propaganda Kit page from the
Anxiety Culture website).
NB: You’ve got a kit here – what do you do with it?
JH: You’ve got a kit – you get a lot of stickers, for under
ten pounds. You can put this...
LR: (indecipherable interruption).
JH: Listen to this – “working more than forty eight hours
doubles the risk of coronary heart disease”.
LR: Noooooo!
JH: Enjoy your life.
LR: Yeah!
(Backdrop changes to “Crap Job Watch” graphic from
Propaganda Kit).
NB: I like that “Crap Job Watch” (pointing to backdrop).
JH: “Don’t be a slave to someone else’s purpose” – have
your own purpose. Enjoy your life more.
NB: If you’re unhappy with your job, blame James first.
JH: Look at that (holds up postcard from Propaganda Kit)
– “Team spirit means mob mentality”... (holds up another
postcard) and “Turn on, tune in, resign”. Enjoy your life.
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One of the postcard designs from the Propaganda

Kit referred to in the review
NB: I never thought about you as a hippy, James.

JH: I like to enjoy life – you don’t have to be a hippy to
enjoy your life... Just be aware of corporate culture.
NB: So you put these stickers all over your computer?
JH: Put them in job centres, boardrooms, whatever.
NB: Do you think this sticker campaign will knock down
global corporations?
JH: No, but it’ll help... it’ll help.
LR: (indecipherable interruption).
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JH: Can I just say a couple of their manifestos (reads

from print-out) – “the more we dwell on responsibilities,
the more responsibilities we get”. “Postpone worrying”.
Why wake up in the morning thinking “I’m going to get
the sack”?
LR: So do you have to pay... do you actually have to pay
for this?
JH: You can pay for the kit... but read their manifestos.
LR: You pay for the kit... so their manifesto means they
get ten quid when you join...
JH: Read. Read. Knowledge is power.
POSTSCRIPT
The implication from one of the Frontal presenters that
Anxiety Culture is a grubby money-making exercise was
particularly ironic, under the circumstances. I sold, in
total, less than ten Propaganda Kits (including after the
publicity I received from this TV show). My original
intention was that if I sold enough kits, I could save
money on printing costs per kit. As it turned out, I
printed out each kit individually (home colour inkjet
printers are great quality, but the inks and the special
inkjet cards, etc, are very expensive), making only £2
profit on each kit sold.
Considering the amount of time I put into creating the
content of the Propaganda Kit (and into physically
assembling each kit) – weeks of effort – the amount of
money I made (less than £20 in total) doesn’t really put
me in the exploitative money-grabbing bracket. But I’m
working on it...
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PART FOUR
BL~ISS:
BULLETIN
OF LEISURE
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FAKE ORGANISATIONS
Creating fake organisations to serve as the ostensible
“authors” of your work attracts more attention and
provokes more thought than presenting your material
simply as “a bunch of ideas by Joe Smith”. I recommend
creating at least two fake organisations and appointing
yourself Director or CEO of each. In a sense they are no
more “fake” than a high proportion of legitimate
businesses (which often use “trading as” names to hide
the real name) or “front organisations” for political or
corporate interests (which are far more common than
most people suspect).
Having a website address for your “organisation” adds
authenticity (and can be set up for around £10), but
otherwise you can just sign-off your emails, letters,
newsgroup postings, etc, with the name of your
“organisation”.
Media people, in particular, are suckers for “organisa-
tions”. It adds credibility to their work when they can
quote organisations rather than lone individuals. Lone
individuals tend to be seen as cranks and crackpots,
whereas “organisations”, at the very worst, are seen as
cool jokes (eg group-created spoof and satire).
Brian Dean
Assistant Director, CANPP
Campaign to Abolish the Nobel Peace Prize
Osmo, Stockholm
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BL~ISS
BL~ISS was an “organisation” I created to distribute a
leaflet in the late nineties. It was basically a put-on,
although the leaflet itself was carefully designed and
convincing in appearance – and it contained some valid
information and ideas.
BL~ISS is short for “Bulletin of Leisure ~ Independent
Space Sector”. It came about because I read Jeremy
Rifkin’s book, The End of Work at the same time that I
read the flyers of a weird group called the Association of
Autonomous Astronauts (AAA for short). I combined the
ideas of Rifkin and the AAA (probably without doing
justice to either) into a weird mix, and then sent a batch
of the finished leaflets to small press distributors (who
generally like to include free flyers and other odd stuff in
their parcels to customers).
Some people might think that all this obscure, small-
scale creativity is entirely pointless. But they are
probably the same people (to paraphrase Robert Anton
Wilson’s description of “Pinks” in Everything is Under
Control) who never have an original or rebellious
thought; who believe what they are told by those above
them in the power structure (family, school, corporation,
etc); who obey orders; who, if drafted, will kill whomever
they are told to kill; who actually enjoy most of what’s
on TV.
The remainder of this section contains the full text of the
BL~ISS leaflet.
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THE END OF WORK

It seems likely that most work will soon cease to exist on
the planet surface. Technology is already shedding jobs
faster than markets can expand to create new jobs.
Economists have calculated that an annual market
growth of 5-10% is necessary to replace the jobs lost
through technology. No developed Earth nation can
sustain this kind of growth.
To quote Jeremy Rifkin, from his book, The End of Work:
We are rapidly approaching a historic crossroads in hu-
man history. Global corporations are now capable of pro-
ducing an unprecedented volume of goods and services
with an ever smaller workforce. The new technologies are
bringing us into an era of near workerless production at
the very moment in world history when population is surg-
ing to unprecedented levels. The clash between rising
population pressures and falling job opportunities will
shape the geopolitics of the emerging high-tech global
economy well into the next century.
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The most important aspect of this cultural transform-

ation is the emergence of the Independent Space Sector.
This has evolved and grown from what used to be called
the non-profit sector. More and more people are choos-
ing to live in the Independent Space Sector – in prefer-
ence to the earthbound, gravity-depressed government
and market sectors.
FUTURE HISTORY OF THE

INDEPENDENT SPACE SECTOR
As corporations and states attempted to exploit the com-
mercial possibilities of space, they were sharply awak-
ened to a neurological fact: the parameters of human
psychological functioning alter drastically in zero gravity
– obedience and conformity are difficult behaviours to
maintain in space. Frustrated by the misbehaviour of
their employees, space corporations quickly gave up on
human labour and instead invested heavily in labour-
saving space technology.
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One effect of this was the high availability and low cost
of such technology. Inevitably, the cost of living in space
became cheaper than on crowded Earth. Independent
space colonies flourished. Cost was not the only thing in
their favour, however: whilst Earth had unemployment,
space habitats had leisure.
Earth-dwellers still had the archaic, puritanical mental-
ity which linked the concept of self-worth to work (de-
spite the fact that human labour had no commodity
value – for years cheap technology had outperformed
human labour in every mundane task). In contrast, the
space colony inhabitants fully realised that outmoded
notions of work had no place in the future of human
evolution.
LEISURE IN SPACE
Work ended in three stages. In the first stage, technol-
ogy became advanced enough to replace human labour
in the agricultural sector. There followed a vast migra-
tion of human workers from agriculture to manufactur-
ing. Manufacturing was a growth sector, so it could
absorb the displaced workers.
The second stage occurred when technology became
advanced enough to replace most of the functions of
human labour in the manufacturing sector. Between the
mid-fifties and the early eighties, there was a continuous
migration of workers from manufacturing to the service
sector. The service sector (banking, insurance, account-
ing, law, airlines, etc) was growing and could absorb the
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displacement from manufacturing. By the late eighties,

nine out of ten jobs in a typical modern city were in the
service sector.
The third stage occurred when computer technology
advanced sufficiently to accomplish most of the func-
tions of the service sector. Speech recognition software
was already in widespread use in the mid-nineties. Arti-
ficial intelligence soon followed, making human manage-
ment, clerical, and secretarial labour look inefficient,
error-ridden and slow.
By the time the space sector appeared, technology had
overtaken the human migration from sector to sector.
Technology replaced human labour in the space sector
before human labour had even really begun to migrate
there. The early space corporation workers were rebel-
lious and non-conformist compared to their more do-
mesticated earthbound colleagues. Space corporations
thus had more incentive to invest in labour-saving tech-
nology.
THE WORKERLESS SOCIETY

“Automation threatens to render possible the reversal of
the relation between free time and working time: the possi-
bility of working time becoming marginal and free time
becoming full time. The result would be a radical trans-
valuation of values, and a mode of existence incompatible
with the traditional culture. Advanced industrial society is
in permanent mobilization against this possibility”
(Herbert Marcuse, in Eros and Civilization – our em-
phasis)
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Marcuse made this prophetic observation five decades

ago – he couldn’t have predicted the rapid advances in
space technology which gave birth to the Independent
Space Sector and its non-formal economy of leisure and
pleasure.
75% of the work force in most earthbound industrial
nations engage in work that is little more than simple
repetitive tasks. The vast majority of these tasks can be
automated. The value of human labour is diminishing
rapidly. This is part of the reason why wages have be-
come lower and lower at the bottom end of the earth
market. In 1979, the average weekly wage in the US was
$387 – by 1989 it was $335 (and that is average, not
low-paid!)
In traditional planet-surface economic thinking, human
beings sold their labour as a commodity in the ‘open’
marketplace. When human labour became increasingly
worthless compared to high-speed, high-efficiency elec-
tronic automation, the traditional link between work and
adequate income no longer applied. With the exception
of a small group of “knowledge professionals”, people
were either workless, or had work which provided insuf-
ficient income. Human labour was no longer an impor-
tant part of the production cycle. New approaches to
providing wealth to individuals, not based on their la-
bour, became necessary.
The failure of earthbound institutions to take account of
these trends led to economic stagnation, growing in-
equality, poverty and epidemic anxiety. In the Independ-
ent Space Sector, however, many communities
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experimented with providing material abundance to

individuals in ways not based on hours worked. The
reason for this was simple: there was a lot of material
abundance (resulting from decades of production-in-
creasing, labour-saving technology), but no work to be
done (most mundane tasks were automated). Mean-
while, the power-obsessed, wealth-hording personalities
stayed on earth – without gravity, they found it difficult
to function as territorially dominant animals. The result
of this was that the wealth, in space, became much
more fairly distributed than on the planet surface. Con-
ventional earth-scarcity ‘wisdom’ such as “there’s no
such thing as a free lunch”, and “if it isn’t hurting, it
isn’t working” became raw material for many of the jokes
told in space.
THE INDEPENDENT SPACE SECTOR

“Most people would find it difficult to imagine a society in
which the market sector and the government play less of a
role in day-to-day affairs. These two institutional forces
have come to so dominate every aspect of our lives that we
forget how limited their role was in the life of society just
one hundred years ago. Corporations and nation-states
are, after all, creatures of the industrial era”
(Jeremy Rifkin, in The End of Work)
Many of the benefits of civilisation now credited to the
government or market sector (eg schools, libraries, hos-
pitals, theatres) were originally created by the independ-
ent, voluntary, non-profit sector – communities of people
pursuing common goals, without ulterior motives of
quick profit. The non-profit sector is vast, yet it goes
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unrepresented in the mass media. There are more than

350,000 voluntary organisations in the UK, with a total
income in excess of £17 billion, ie 4% of the gross na-
tional product.
Unlike slavery, serfdom and wage employment, activity
in this sector is not coerced or reduced to financial mo-
tives of fear or greed.
The independent non-profit sector came into full flower
when territorial-dominance imperatives started to atro-
phy in the humans who ventured into space. In hind-
sight we can see that it required the neurological shift
induced by zero gravity to bring about this transforma-
tion of human culture. The vast majority of planet-tied
people remained addicted to territorial security-anxiety
and continued to perpetuate the earthbound culture of
fear. But those who had tasted space were inevitably
drawn back to the BLISS cultures of the independent
space communities.
EARTHBOUND GRAPPLING WITH THE PAINFUL ISSUE

OF PLANET-SURFACE UNEMPLOYMENT
“Technological advances are now so rapid that companies
can shed far more workers than they need to hire to imple-
ment the technology or support expanding sales”
(Wall Street Journal, February 24th, 1994)
In 1993 the US retail giant, Sears, shed 50,000 jobs
from its merchandising division. This was in a year
when sales revenue rose by more than 10%. At the time
of writing this BL~ISS bulletin, we heard that Electrolux
announced they are cutting 12,000 jobs over the next
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two years. Large layoffs such as these are becoming

increasingly common as the technological revolution
restructures corporate culture.
The claim that unemployment can be conquered by
sustained economic growth has little supporting evi-
dence. Unemployment has more than doubled in the UK
since 1979. (2002 note: Since writing the BL~ISS leaflet,
the official unemployment figure has come down to below
one million – claimed as the lowest figure for three dec-
ades. However, this figure is widely mistrusted – by the
Labour Party, before they came into government, and even
by the Royal Statistical Society. The official figure uses the
benefit claimant count, and is thus distorted every time the
conditions for receiving benefits are tightened – the true
unemployed figure is estimated to be four times higher).
Europe’s economy grew by 70% in the last 25 years but
only 10% new jobs were created. Meanwhile, back in the
UK, nine out of ten jobs created since 1992 have been
temporary or part-time.
“Hitler provided full employment... Prisons and chain
gangs have full employment. Coercion can always provide
full employment”
(Henry Hazlitt, in Economics in One Lesson)
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PART FIVE
PUBLISHED
Articles
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ALTERNATIVE ECONOMICS
This is a shorter, amended version of an article I wrote for
the Idler (issue 31, Winter 2002/3). The Idler article was
titled: A Bluffer’s Guide to Revolutionary Economics, and
concentrated more on the art of bluffing than this version.
NO SHORTAGE OF ALTERNATIVES
There are hundreds of economic ideas which fall outside
conventional capitalist and socialist theories. The main
difficulty is sifting through them all to find the best
ones. As a starting point for people new to alternative
economics, I’ve selected a handful of my own favourites.
BASIC INCOME
A Basic Income is an income paid to all individuals,
without work requirement or means test. People are free
(but not obliged) to top it up with income from other
sources, eg self-employment or jobs. Over the last two
centuries this idea has been independently proposed
under a variety of names – Citizen’s Income, Universal
Benefit, State Bonus, Social Credit and National Divi-
dend – usually with the aim of remedying social prob-
lems such as poverty and unemployment.
Several ways have been suggested to fund a Basic In-
come. Nobel prize-winning economist James Meade
proposed a social dividend funded from the return on
publicly owned productive assets. An existing example of
a Basic Income funded this way is Alaska’s dividend
scheme, which is funded from royalties on Alaska’s vast
oil fields. Some economists think that funding should
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come from redistributive income taxation or a tax on

land. These ideas aren’t new – as far back as 1796, Tho-
mas Paine favoured a state-provided universal income to
compensate for the inequitable division of land, which
he saw as belonging to everyone. Of course, technology
has led to vast increases in national wealth since Paine’s
era, making the idea of a universal income seem all the
more affordable.
Many people argue that a Basic Income would remove
the incentive to work and nurture an idle underclass. In
fact, compared to the existing welfare system, Basic
Income provides a strong financial incentive for creative
and productive activity. With Basic Income it’s more
financially rewarding to move from unemployment into a
job – because you keep your Basic Income payments,
whereas you would lose your dole.
Many common types of work – eg low-paid casual, part-
time or self-employed work – increase your disposable
income under a Basic Income scheme, whereas the in-
come from such work is subtracted from your dole un-
der the current system. Many worthwhile activities –
adult education, voluntary work, starting a business, etc
– are penalised or even criminalised under the current
welfare system, because they interfere with the condition
of “continuous availability for work.” Most wealth-creat-
ing activity begins modestly, perhaps not generating
enough for a person to survive on at first. Basic Income
nurtures such activity, whereas the welfare system
aborts it.
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GUARANTEED INCOME
Guaranteed Income is sometimes confused with Basic
Income, but the important difference is that it uses a
means test. Every individual is guaranteed a minimum
income (set above the poverty level) – if your income falls
below this level, you automatically get a top-up from the
government, but as your personal income increases, the
amount of top-up decreases. Guaranteed Income, like
Basic Income, is not conditional upon work.
Several variations of Guaranteed Income have been
proposed, the most well known being Robert Theobald’s
1964 scheme for “Basic Economic Security”. Theobald
was concerned about the effect of technology and in-
creasing automation – he thought it was time to dissolve
the traditional link between income and work, since
most work would eventually be automated. Theobald’s
proposal’s were taken quite seriously by the US adminis-
trations under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. In
fact, Nixon adopted Guaranteed Income proposals as
part of his “Family Assistance Plan” bill (which was un-
fortunately defeated in the Senate).
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NEGATIVE INCOME TAX

One variation of Guaranteed Income is the Negative
Income Tax, which would provide government top-ups,
via the tax system, to those below a certain income level.
It should be pointed out to those who see this as a “soft”
leftist idea, that Negative Income Tax was proposed by
Milton Friedman, whom many regard as being on the
right of the economic spectrum. Friedman’s intention
was to create a system that costs less than the current
welfare system, but which avoids the degrading nature
of welfare.
WILLINGNESS TO WORK?
Many so-called “guaranteed minimum income” schemes
restrict entitlement, among the unemployed, to those
“willing to work” – a condition similar to that of current
welfare systems. The Belgian political theorist Philippe
Van Parijs argues that when we assess willingness-to-
work, we should make the distinction between pointless,
dead-end jobs and useful, fulfilling or “stepping stone”
jobs – and that the best people to make this distinction
are the ones doing the jobs. This is a different approach
from most conventional economists, who tend to see all
market-created jobs as “good” and “worthwhile”.
Employers can currently exploit the willingness-to-work
condition by providing what Van Parijs calls “lousy
jobs”, which people are forced to accept. On the other
hand, how, without the willingness-to-work condition,
do you get people to take jobs which are essentially
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decent but low-paid? Under a Guaranteed Income

scheme there is little financial incentive to take low-paid
work, hence the willingness-to-work condition. Van
Parijs concludes that the best solution would be a Basic
Income scheme with no willingness-to-work condition.
This would remove the coercion of taking “lousy” jobs,
but retain the incentive to take decent low-paid jobs,
since even the lowest paid jobs significantly increase
one’s disposable income under a Basic Income scheme.
ZERO-INTEREST CURRENCY
A different type of non-coercive redistribution of wealth
comes from the old Individualist (as opposed to
Collectivist) Anarchist approach of allowing free trade to
drive down the cost of “borrowing” money. This idea
originated with early anarchists such as Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, Josiah Warren and Benjamin Tucker.
Free trade is supposed to drive down prices through
open competition, but according to Proudhon, Warren
and Tucker there is a fundamental flaw in the existing
system: a lack of competition in the issuance of cur-
rency. The current legally enforced money-issuing mo-
nopoly (eg the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve)
keeps interest at an artificially high level – if free compe-
tition was allowed in the creation and distribution of
alternative currencies, the cost of credit could in theory
fall to a rate well below 1% (the cost of administering the
credit; true interest would be zero). As Benjamin Tucker
explains:
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“If a thousand men engaged in different lines of business

unite to form a bank of issue; and if this bank of issue
unites with other similar banks for clearing purposes; and
if said bank lends its naturally well-known circulating
credit… do these loans of the bank’s credit cost the bank
anything beyond the salaries of manager and assistants,
rent of building, expenditure for paper and printing, losses
by depreciation of securities, and sundry incidentals? Do
not statisticians and economists agree that a discount of
one-half of one percent covers the expenses referred to?”
When asked why business people would be motivated to
issue their own currency at a cost not exceeding running
expenses and incidental losses, Tucker responds that in
forming a network of such banks, the business people
would establish a collective credit with circulating
power, enabling them to borrow money at less than one
per cent – which, he assures us, would be a more than
sufficient motivation.
The irony of this idea is that it follows conventional “free
market” theory to logical conclusions. It’s a good
argument to use on “leave it to the market” types. Get
them to acknowledge that a currency monopoly is at
odds with free market philosophy, then point out that a
genuinely free market, without any monopoly, is the
economic recipe for an Individualist Anarchist utopia.
With zero-interest credit, housing rent would effectively
disappear, because nobody would give money away to
landlords if purchasing was cheaper. In fact, the
anarchists claim that zero-interest currency would
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eventually remove all forms of usury, including “profit”,

from economic transactions. Adam Smith’s principle of
“labour being the true measure of price” would thus
come into effect through free competition driving out all
usurious components of price. Workers would be fully
compensated for their work at last, and not a Marxist or
Collectivist in sight.
ALTERNATIVE CURRENCIES
LTERNATIVE
Although it’s normally illegal, there have been hundreds
of attempts to issue alternative currencies. The British
government suppressed an attempt to distribute low-
interest currency in the American colonies (prior to the
revolution) and quashed a similar attempt by Scottish
banks – in order to preserve the monopoly of the Bank of
England. There are published records of experiments in
issuing private currencies by the American Individualist
Anarchists (eg True Civilization by Josiah Warren and
Mutual Banking by William Greene), and of course there
are experiments that we don’t know about because of
their secrecy. During the 1930s depression in America,
hundreds of alternative local currencies were issued.
The government mostly turned a blind eye unless cur-
rencies threatened to cross state lines, in which case
they put a stop to it. It will be interesting to see how
governments react to alternative electronic currencies
springing up in cyberspace.
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STAMP SCRIP
In 1891 an Argentinian businessman and economist
named Silvio Gesell went one step further than the Indi-
vidualist Anarchists by proposing a system of negative
interest currency. The most well-known form of this
currency was “stamp scrip”, which required a stamp to
be affixed to the back of a money note each month, to
revalidate it.
Gesell believed that money is fine as a medium of ex-
change, but that it tends to be used as an instrument of
power, capable of dominating and distorting the market.
For example, money can be hoarded – temporarily with-
held from the market for speculative purposes – without
exposing its holder to losses. Real material goods, on the
other hand, can’t be hoarded without significant costs –
either in the natural deterioration of the goods, or in the
cost of storage.
In order to encourage the natural circulation of wealth
instead of speculative hoarding, Gesell proposed “rusting
bank notes” (a metaphor for negative-interest money), to
bring about an “organic reform” of the monetary system.
With money behaving more like real material wealth, the
distortions in the system caused by hoarding and other
forms of usury would be removed. This, he argued,
would result in people receiving the full proceeds of their
own labour, and would enable large sections of the
population to quit wage slavery and work in an autono-
mous manner in private and co-operative enterprises.
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A successful experiment with Gesell’s theories took place

in the Austrian town of Wörgl in 1932, during the de-
pression. Wörgl effectively ran out of money, so the
mayor of the town printed his own. The resulting cur-
rency, Wörgl stamp scrip, was designed to automatically
earn negative interest. Each month its holders had to
pay a stamp fee of 1% of the value of the note, so people
spent the money as fast as possible. This resulted in a
huge increase in “real wealth” – new houses, a new wa-
ter system, repaved streets, a new bridge, a ski jump,
etc. But when hundreds of other Austrian towns came
up with plans to copy the successful Wörgl scheme, the
central bank panicked because of the threat to its mo-
nopoly, and it soon became illegal to issue alternative
currency in Austria.
THE DIGITAL ECONOMY

Apart from the possibility of alternative electronic cur-
rencies, the “digital economy” hasn’t delivered much of
revolutionary economic impact. In fact, most “digital
economy” propaganda looks like standard Reaganite or
Thatcherite economics disguised by techno-gibberish.
The first electronic money-trading system was opened by
Reuters in 1973, shortly after the dismantling of the
gold standard and the Bretton Woods system (which
regulated international currencies). From earliest
records up until then, 90% of capital transactions had
involved the “real economy”, ie trade and investment,
with only 10% being speculation. By 1995 a staggering
reversal had taken place – trade and investment ac-
counted for only 5% of capital transfers, with 95% being
short-term speculation.
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Electronic trading networks have developed a virtual

economy in which most of the money is made not
through actual investment, but through transacting in a
sort of abstract wealth. For example, huge profits can be
made from a rumour about an indirect effect of a future
transaction – but the future transaction doesn’t neces-
sarily have to happen for the profits to be made. By far
the biggest profits come from currency speculation,
conjured up by supercomputers which transact fast
enough to exploit microfluctuations in exchange rates.
Very little of this virtual-economy profiteering produces
anything of value in the sense of “real wealth” – ie things
of real value to human lives. Short-term financial specu-
lation tends to create economies of high profit, low in-
vestment, low growth and low wages – in other words,
it’s detrimental to the lives of most ordinary people. We
have some strange notions about the respectability of
certain types of income. When poor people receive mod-
est welfare payments without producing anything of
value, they’re labelled as “spongers”, but when specula-
tors bleed vast sums from the digital economy, without
producing anything of value, we congratulate them on
their skill.
THE TOBIN TAX

James Tobin, a Nobel laureate economist, foresaw the
detrimental effects of escalating currency speculation
during the 1970s. He proposed a small tax on foreign
currency transactions that would put “sand in the
wheels” of international speculative finance, and thus
help to prevent instability in the global financial system.
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One big advantage of the Tobin Tax is the amount of

revenue it would generate. Currency speculators trade
over $1.8 trillion dollars each day across borders. With
the tax set at the very low proposed rate of 0.1 to 0.25
percent, an estimated $100 – $300 billion per year
would be generated, depending on the formula used.
Supporters of the Tobin Tax say this revenue should be
used to tackle world social and environmental problems.
And it’s interesting to note that the UN and World Bank
estimated in 1997 that the cost of removing the worst
forms of poverty and providing basic environmental
protection would be about $225 billion per year.
ECONOMIC “AUTHORITY”
Most alternative economic ideas – even those as benign
and sensible as the Tobin Tax – have been floating
around for decades without being implemented. As a
result, advocates of such alternative schemes are likely
to be exposed to arguments such as: “if it’s such a great
idea, why hasn’t it already happened?” It’s important to
realise that the people making these objections are never
convinced by logical reasoning. Only the endorsement by
a conventional authority will convince them. A good
ploy, therefore, is to quote foreign authorities – Euro-
pean countries in particular seem more open to new
economic ideas. For example, the French, Belgian and
Canadian parliaments have already voted in favour of a
Tobin Tax; the Irish government has seriously consid-
ered a Basic Income scheme, etc. Or, you can quote
intellectual authorities. For example, Silvio Gesell’s con-
cept of negative-interest money was supported by John
Maynard Keynes, who said: “I believe that the future will
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learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of

Marx”. With a little ingenuity it’s possible to link a Nobel
economist to any economic theory.
If you have no authorities to quote, you can always base
your argument on compassion. For example, if a Guar-
anteed Income costs less than welfare and humiliates
recipients less than welfare, who, other than a total
sadist, would not want to consider such a scheme? If
zero-interest currency provides higher wages for work-
ers, why not seriously think about it? If the Tobin Tax
can, quite literally, save millions of lives, who would be
so inhuman as to complain about the minor impractical-
ity of the idea?
Written in Autumn 2002, for the Idler.
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SEX ROBOTS
Most people think a sexual revolution occurred in the
late 20th century, but if it did occur why does no-one
have time to enjoy the erotic side of life? Average work-
ing hours increased over the last three decades – which
means we have less time than ever to enjoy our bodies.
Work-related stress and road rage don’t seem conducive
to sensual pleasure.
There have been attempts to start a sexual revolution –
to release us from our humdrum lives of work and worry
– but they apparently failed. Perhaps they were blocked
by the authorities, or perhaps society wasn’t ready. At
any rate, we continue with our tired, grey, robotic rou-
tine, fully believing in the mass delusion that we’re
sexually liberated.
Meanwhile, the media lurches, in schizophrenic fashion,
from puritanical censorship to overblown sex-obsession.
When it isn’t issuing prim warnings about TV shows
which contain “scenes of a sexual nature”, it’s exploiting
explicit sexual imagery to boast audience figures. The
mainstream intellectual coverage of sex isn’t much bet-
ter – most of it seems backward-looking, as if everything
of importance has already happened.
Perhaps nothing important has happened yet. If we ever
reach a state in which everyone can enjoy oceans of
sensual bliss without the worry of a ticking clock, then
maybe we can claim, finally, that something important
has occurred.
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It’s certainly long overdue. Centuries ago, anyone who

mentioned eroticism in public risked imprisonment or
torture by the Inquisition. For that reason, sexual her-
etics hid their ideas in occult symbolism and poetry. The
more overt forms of the Inquisition have since died out,
but state authorities have always regarded Eros as a
threat to “national security”. Recently released MI5 files
express the sheer horror felt by the British establish-
ment towards the “depravity” of James Joyce and the
“open sexuality” of certain Hollywood actresses.
Even in recent decades there have been cases of sexual
heretics being treated as “enemies of the state” – includ-
ing imprisonment, harassment by government agencies
and, in one case, book-burning (by order of the US au-
thorities). One wonders why certain individuals should
be singled out for official wrath at a time of ostensible
sexual liberalisation. Perhaps they held the keys to the
sexual revolution that never happened.
It’s worth taking a look at the ideas of state-persecuted
sex-revolutionaries. Three significant examples come to
mind: Osho Rajneesh, Timothy Leary and Wilhelm
Reich. These three figures were controversial in many
ways, but they are of particular interest here because of
their revolutionary socio-sexual theories and the re-
markably harsh treatment they received from govern-
ments (they were each sent to prison and expelled from
countries; Reich was the one who had his books and
scientific papers incinerated).
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Rajneesh, Leary and Reich each approached sex from

the viewpoint of radical sociology. They wanted to create
deep, lasting changes in society, and they saw the trans-
formation of sex as a way to trigger social evolution.
Rajneesh claimed that sex is usually a person’s first
experience of “bliss”, and that we become too dependent
on sex as a route to bliss. This over-dependence, com-
bined with the social control of sex – through domestica-
tion, morality, repression, sex-role convention,
economics, etc – turns us into socially-controlled sex-
robots. In order to get bliss through sex, we must pay a
high social price, one way or another. Dysfunctional
families, festering resentments and wider social prob-
lems such as violence all stem from our unhealthy de-
pendence on sex as the only means of blissful release,
according to Rajneesh.
His solution was for children to learn meditation as a
form of pre-sexual self-induced bliss (transcendental
masturbation, so to speak). This would reduce the de-
pendency on sex and make the emerging adult sex-role
less compulsive. Here Rajneesh echoes neurological
“imprint” theory – the idea that one’s early sexual expe-
riences “imprint” the nervous system with a “sex-role”
which is acted out automatically and repetitively
throughout one’s life. His meditation techniques are
intended to immunise against an imprint of heavy de-
pendence.
Timothy Leary was famous for psychedelic research, but
he also produced some innovative work on imprinting.
According to Leary, the imprinting of sex-roles occurs in
three stages: adolescence, adult domestication and
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menopause. Adolescent sex-roles range from wild pro-

miscuity to puritanical renunciation. The domesticated
adult sex-role is usually imprinted at the start of parent-
hood, but the role selected is not necessarily parental.
To quote Leary: “Many non-parental roles are harnessed
together in the domesticated society – nurses, teachers...
J. Edgar Hoover and Pope Paul are the staunchest sup-
porters of family life”.
Sex-role has wider social implications than erotic prefer-
ence. Consider, for example, someone who spends 40
hours a week in a tedious job, year after year, in order to
provide “security” for their family. That’s an example of a
sex-role of “responsibility” and “commitment” within a
nuclear family. It should also be noted that a domesti-
cated adult sex-role doesn’t necessarily imply a
“straight” erotic preference – as press reports of the
private lives of politicians often demonstrate.
Leary, like Rajneesh, noticed that most adult sex-roles
tend to be robotic, leading to conformist, herd-like be-
haviour. Leary’s remedy for domesticated sex-roles was
experimentation with various forms of self-induced bliss,
including the careful use of psychedelic enhancement.
He also stressed the “evolutionary” importance of ex-
tended adolescence. He mentions, for example, the me-
dieval tarot card The Hermit, which he says portrays a
figure who “rejects or postpones hive-parental responsi-
bility and searches for a new way, a higher role”. He
adds that this represents the “genetic blossom of the
successful species, the key to evolution”.
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Wilhelm Reich is less well-known than Leary or

Rajneesh, but he had a big influence on the New Age
movement, and his writings about “patriarchal capital-
ism” seem to foreshadow aspects of radical feminism.
Reich’s method for transforming sex was a form of
therapy designed to dissolve “character armour”. Char-
acter armour is an inhibiting psychological defense
mechanism which manifests as chronic “uptight” mus-
cular tension – it affects, in varying degrees, everyone
brought up in a sexually repressive society. Reich be-
lieved that the social effect of character armour was
“emotional plague” – a term he invented for the all irra-
tional bigotries, prejudices, violence, fascist tendencies,
etc, so prevalent in supposedly “civilised” society.
Dissolving character armour would free people from
rigid socio-sexual imprints, and often this would have a
completely transforming effect on the personality.
Reich’s therapy, unlike psychoanalysis, worked directly
on the body to dissolve deep-seated muscular and respi-
ratory tensions. Reich argued that society would remain
authoritarian until character armour (ie dysfunctional
sexual imprinting) could be reduced in most of the
population.
The hostility of the authorities towards these revolution-
ary approaches makes sense from a sociological per-
spective. Statistics show that increasingly large numbers
of people want fundamental social changes: shorter
working hours, more liberal drug laws, etc. But an
equally large group resists such changes. Those who
wish to preserve the status quo fear a perceived “break-
down” in morals, family values, sense of duty, etc. These
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moral anxieties come from individuals with relatively

conservative sex-roles, who tend to monopolise the no-
tion of “morality”.
Morality seems to be a function of the domesticated
adult sex-role. Children and adolescents don’t create
morals. Morality differs with various types of adult sex-
role, but the more robotic the sex-role, the more predict-
able the morals. It follows that releasing people from
sex-role robotry – with the help of therapy, drugs, medi-
tation, etc – would tend to “loosen” morals. In other
words, people would think for themselves, rather than
be psychologically terrorised by a set of absolute “rights”
and “wrongs” imposed by a group of people with a
“moral guardian” sex-role.
Unfortunately, the conservative media can easily use
this concept to stir up hysteria. They simply equate
“moral relativity” with an attack on love, decency, re-
spect, family life, etc. Once you press the “moral out-
rage” buttons of the domesticated readership, the result
is as predictable as pressing the buttons on a mechani-
cal device. Or at least that seems to be the hope of cer-
tain tabloids.
De-robotised individuals will question this media hyste-
ria. Only a total robot could fail to be sceptical about the
sentimental notions surrounding so-called “family val-
ues”. The only kind of “love” and “respect” under threat
from a sexual revolution is the kind based on fearful
conformity. The only kind of “decency” under threat is
the kind that’s rigidly defined by paranoid authoritarian
types. The only kind of “family life” under threat is the
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kind that raises children to be too stupid or neurotic to

see through the domesticated adults’ hypocritical bulls-
hit.
If a sexual revolution succeeded in diminishing the so-
cial value placed on domesticated sex-roles, many peo-
ple in authority would get nervous. The values used to
motivate people to work like slaves or support bogus
wars – “responsibility”, “duty”, “honour”, etc – sound
hollow from outside a domesticated sex-role. How do you
control people if they don’t respond to these values in a
pre-programmed, domesticated way?
The understandable reluctance of the authorities to lose
robotic control of the domesticated herd perhaps ex-
plains why the sexual revolution has been postponed. Or
perhaps the explanation is simply that most people
aren’t ready to lose their domesticated values. Whatever
the reason for its postponement, we’re sure to notice
when the sexual revolution finally arrives – not because
of a sudden flood of porn or a “breakdown” in family life,
but because we’ll finally have enough time to enjoy the
simple, sensual pleasures of life.
An alternative version of this article was published in The
Idler, issue 30, Summer 2002.
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THE COMPROMISED
ANTI-CONSUMERIST
This article was commissioned by a magazine (which will
remain nameless) with a high circulation among the Lon-
don club scene. Unlike the other articles in this anthology,
it was never published – the magazine backed out at the
last moment and never paid me.
Ever since Sprite’s “image is nothing, thirst is every-
thing” TV commercial, ad agencies have churned out a
sort of watered-down anti-consumerism aimed at the
youth market. These “anti-advertising” ad campaigns
have proven popular with many corporations. According
to advertising critic Leslie Savan, “some of them are
savvy enough to know that the more they sponsor mes-
sages that attack [mindless consumerism], the cooler
they seem. They’re amoebae; they can constantly take in
anything and come off seeming hip” (quoted in Stay
Free! magazine).
The corporate absorption of counterculture ideas is the
subject of an increasingly large number of books, maga-
zines and websites. Some, like Douglas Rushkoff, author
of Children of Chaos, regard it as healthy, but most echo
Negativland’s Mark Hosler, who says (in an interview
with Savan): “I just don’t know where we can go with our
art because they’re just absorbing it.”
There’s a fine line between concern and paranoia when
it comes to the belief in an all-consuming corporate
monster. It’s one thing to feel dismayed at seeing a
talented comedian doing a beer commercial, but it’s
another thing to regard everybody within ten miles of a
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corporate logo as suspicious. It might seem reasonable

to diagnose paranoia when, for example, a person
suspects all liberals and mainstream journalists of
working for the Corporate Devil.
Paranoia is not a good strategy. Identifying all the ways
in which corporations co-opt and corrupt does nothing
but reinforce the idea of corporate invincibility. Instead
of obsessing over corporate strengths, it might be more
effective to tune into their weaknesses. Like a kung fu
master, we can use the opponent’s weaknesses to
unbalance him. But first we must recognise our own
weaknesses.
Perhaps there are weaknesses in the anti-consumerist
message which allow it to be appropriated so easily by
corporations. On the surface, the anti-consumerist
approach seems reasonably sound: individuals can
choose not to buy into a lifestyle which perpetuates the
capitalist system and destroys the environment. This is
individualistic, bottom-up thinking: anti-consumerists
believe it’s naive to expect governments or corporations
to improve in a top-down way. So, if an individual hates
working at a particular job, the solution is for that
individual to adopt a cheaper, simpler lifestyle, so as to
become less dependent on a regular salary.
Are there any weaknesses in this approach which can be
exploited by corporate advertising? Probably – at least at
a superficial level. Any approach which advocates an
individual lifestyle is obviously fodder for advertisers. It
hardly matters that the lifestyle in question is one of
simplicity, frugality and environmentalism. Advertisers
have plenty of experience selling those things.
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At a deeper level it should be recognised that an indi-

vidualistic, bottom-up approach underlies not just anti-
consumerism but also free-market economic thinking.
Like the anti-consumerists, “free-enterprise” entrepre-
neurs have no faith in governments or top-down solu-
tions. The free-market philosophy, which supposedly
underlies capitalism, is about individuals doing their
own thing and taking personal responsibility for their
financial situation. Faced with a poverty-stricken em-
ployee, a capitalist employer would say “your financial
situation is your own individual responsibility. If you feel
underpaid then maybe you should adopt a less expen-
sive lifestyle or find another job” – which, oddly, is simi-
lar to what an anti-consumerist might say.
To put the individualistic, bottom-up approach in per-
spective, consider the opposite: a top-down “social” ap-
proach. For example, a European socialist government
which implements a generous welfare system. Or, say,
France, where a maximum 35 hour working week has
been introduced. Now try to imagine an American ad
agency co-opting the ideas behind these top-down social
policies in order to sell consumer products. It’s quite
difficult to imagine, though not impossible: “Social con-
cern, state welfare, and the great taste of Pepsi!” Maybe
not. By contrast, it’s much easier to imagine anti-con-
sumerist ideas being co-opted because they fall into the
American ethos of rugged individualism – of responsible,
heroic individuals taking a stand and proudly refusing
social charity, etc. In that sense, anti-consumerists are
part of a broad libertarian tradition which has always
been an easy target for advertisers.
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One further example will hopefully make this point

clear: Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, was recently
asked in a newspaper interview how the anti-consumer-
ist movement could best fight the corporate system. Her
answer was: “I believe that the most fundamental core
belief of this movement is self-determination”. She re-
peated the term “self-determination” a few times as
being the best strategy against corporate dominance.
The problem is that “self-determination” is also part of
the ethos of capitalism, and is a fetish of entrepreneurs.
So it’s difficult to see how preaching “self-determination”
is a solution to a capitalist system which has been
preaching “self-determination” for years.
Another potential weakness of anti-consumerists is their
moralistic attitude towards the “instant gratification” of
consumerism. For example, an article called Rotting
Away: The Political Economy of Corruption and Deca-
dence, from the popular anti-capitalist magazine ZNet,
described modern consumer society as a rotting, corrupt,
dirty, tainted, decadent, toxic cesspool. This kind of lan-
guage sounds very similar to rightwing Protestant Chris-
tians condemning “immoral” society. In fact, much of the
language used by anti-consumerists when disapproving
of “materialism” and approving of “simplicity” reminds
me of Protestant ethics. Ironically, the foundations of the
capitalist edifice were built by Protestant industrialists
who had a similar disliking of decadence and instant
gratification.
It helps to distinguish valid anti-consumerist arguments
– eg environmental, social and economic – from arbitrary
encrustations of moral and spiritual correctness. After
all, one person’s “purity” is another person’s “corrup-
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tion”. Spiritual judgements are highly subjective and

therefore easily appropriated by advertisers. The fact
that ad agencies have already started to exploit the
popularity of “simplicity” and “purity” should be suffi-
cient evidence of this.
Here’s another quote from the advertising critic Leslie
Savan, describing how corporations co-opt everything
(taken from Stay Free! magazine):
“We can throw anti-commercial messages at them and
they incorporate it and become immune to it. They’ve sur-
mounted it, they’ve incorporated the critique so they can
go beyond that. The critique has to rise to another level
and then they’ll incorporate that. They just become bigger
and bigger and more powerful.”
If, as Savan claims, co-opting works so well as a tactic
for corporations, then mightn’t it also work for anti-
consumerists? “Co-opt” doesn’t mean Adbusters-style
parody – it means bringing something onto your own
side. Anti-consumerists have a problem with this be-
cause bringing on board anything remotely “capitalist” is
regarded as “compromising” and “corrupting” rather
than co-opting. This is the result of thinking strictly in
black-and-white, us-and-them terms. Grey areas are not
allowed. People who inhabit the grey areas – woolly liber-
als, mainstream TV producers, etc – are automatically
seen as the enemy, and therefore rejected. There is no
attempt made to co-opt them, as that would pollute the
purity of the anti-corporate ideals. Corporations, by
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contrast, are not pursuing ideological purity, so they

own the grey areas by default, which gives them a big
advantage.
There is one other potential flaw in anti-consumerism:
lack of consensus over technology. Many anti-consumer-
ist arguments, when taken to a logical conclusion,
express an anti-technology viewpoint – some even advo-
cate a return to a pre-industrial society. This strand of
anti-consumerism can easily be attacked, especially
when activists themselves make frequent use of compu-
ter technology, and thus appear to be fundamentally
hypocritical.
CORPORATE WEAKNESSES
Now let’s expose the soft underbelly of the corporate
empire. Ironically, the main vulnerability of corporations
is that they are not vast dunghills of evil, but collections
of thousands of individual human beings trapped in
bureaucratic monotony. Most of these individuals dislike
being wage slaves and see their work as drudgery. The
pro-leisure, pro-pleasure, anti-wage slavery movement is
a bush fire waiting to ignite. Millions of bored, stressed-
out corporate employees want escape. To quote William
Blake: “the whole creation will be consumed and appear
infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and
corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of
sensual enjoyment.” And, importantly, by having suffi-
cient leisure time to experience that enjoyment.
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But what about the corporate chiefs? The tiny minority

of humans who head corporations are rich and powerful,
but they’re probably not James Bond-type megalo-
maniac villians. They have human weaknesses such as
vanity, which means they want to be liked and
respected. And in order to be respected, they justify
their greed and ruthlessness in intellectual terms –
usually by a combination of neo-classical economics and
Social Darwinism. But what if these convenient
intellectual theories were widely discredited? What if a
popular philosophical revolution kicked away all the
respectable intellectual justifications for greed?
The corporate world’s biggest weakness is its phony
intellectual self-justification, its increasingly hollow-
sounding “free-market” rhetoric. Even billionaire capital-
ists like George Soros criticise the logic of the corporate
economic worldview (which Soros calls “market funda-
mentalism”). It’s no longer just political dissidents who
sneer at market economics – everybody is starting to
sneer.
Many contemporary movements in science, literature,
religion, art, popular music, psychology, sociology and
philosophy are opposed to market fundamentalism, and
this trend is seeping into popular culture – especially
youth culture. So when a couple of marketing consult-
ants (Janine Lopiano-Misdom and Joanne De Luca)
publish a book called: “Street Trends: How Today’s Alter-
native Youth Cultures are Creating Tomorrow’s Main-
stream Markets”, there’s no reason to be paranoid about
“co-opting”. If youth culture reflects artistic and intellec-
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tual innovation, then even watered-down, co-opted

youth culture can undermine corporate fundamentalism
in unpredictable ways.
SUMMARY/CONCLUSIONS
Paranoia is not a good strategy – it turns you into an
eternal victim. Morbid obsession with corporate power is
self-defeating and depressing. Corporations may be huge
and wealthy, but they’re also stupid. Their own stupidity
will ultimately undermine them. Meanwhile, anti-con-
sumerism, in its current forms, has flaws that can easily
be exploited by advertisers and corporate PR agencies.
Valid intellectual dissent is never really “co-opted”. If
anything, it functions as a Trojan Horse when corpora-
tions try to “absorb” it.
Written in January 2001.
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OFFICE RAT MAZE

Intelligence tests are often used by employers to weed
out brainless job candidates, but an increasing number
of UK companies use a test designed to identify candi-
dates who are too smart. The idea behind the Wonderlic
Personnel Test is that people can be too stupid or too
bright for a job. If too bright, they might become bored
and leave, or they might spread a mood of frustration
and disenchantment throughout the workplace.
Employers who use the Wonderlic test take the threat of
over-intelligent workers very seriously. For example,
many US police force job applicants have been rejected
for scoring too highly in the test (one applicant sued in
federal court for unfair disqualification).
The extensive use of the Wonderlic test (it’s the world’s
most widely used employee intelligence test) has a sinis-
ter implication. The corporate world seems fully aware
that most jobs require relatively low intelligence. High
intelligence is seen as a hindrance, because there’s no
way that intelligent people would tolerate 40 hours of
tedious monotony every week. It follows that full employ-
ment – the holy grail of conservative politicians – would
require low intelligence in most of the population. But
the only guaranteed way to achieve this is mass lo-
botomy.
The majority of jobs being created seem to be low-paid
and soul-destroying: telesales, security guards, office
administration, etc. If large numbers of intelligent people
are forced into tedious jobs, the frustration they feel
must be managed and contained, otherwise their em-
ployers won’t profit. After herding people into office
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buildings, how do you keep them productive, week after

week, in activities which insult their intelligence? It
seems like a huge management problem.
To an extent, industry has always had this problem.
Captains of industry have forever been on the lookout
for ways to increase management control of worker pro-
ductivity. Modern psychology, in particular, has been a
happy hunting ground for company bosses wanting to
maximise performance and discipline.
One branch of psychology in particular has provided
important advances in management control. In the early
1900s, behaviourism revolutionised psychology by fo-
cusing entirely on objectively measurable human re-
sponses to stimuli. Subjective mental states like
happiness or boredom were dismissed as irrelevant to
the scientific process. At the same time, a scientific
management approach was taking hold in industry – for
example, time and motion studies emphasised observ-
able, measurable worker behaviour. The job of both the
psychologist and the manager was to manipulate the
human environment to produce the desired results.
Behaviourism treated humans like rats in a maze, and it
wasn’t too long before Gestalt psychologists challenged
this reductionist, mechanistic view of people. Scientific
management was also criticised: studies conducted in
the 1930s showed that worker productivity was not
determined entirely by the workplace, but had as much
to do with the feelings and perceptions of workers.
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During the 1950s, behaviourism became popular again,

largely due to the work of B.F. Skinner. After a lot of
experimenting on rats and pigeons, Skinner made some
important advances on classical Pavlovian conditioning
(he developed the concept of “operant conditioning”).
Skinner’s advanced conditioning techniques found their
way into industry by way of organisational behaviour
modification and contingency management.
Modern office technology provides managers with the
ultimate behaviourist tool: continuous remote monitor-
ing of employee activity. There’s nowhere to hide
anymore. And we shouldn’t be fooled by company PR
about sensitivity to the feelings of employees. In spite of
occasional management trends towards a warmer, more
humanistic approach (consideration of the needs and
goals of individuals, etc), behaviourism remains the
favourite approach of those who like to be in control.
Another relevant area of psychology is cognitive disso-
nance, which sheds light on the peculiar psychological
torture experienced by many office workers. Cognitive
dissonance is a term for what happens when we think or
act in ways which contradict our self-image. For exam-
ple, some job roles require us to behave in an “out of
character” way. This can be uncomfortable, embarrass-
ing and stressful. We normally escape the discomfort of
cognitive dissonance by distracting ourselves (get a cof-
fee, read a newspaper, etc), but with no distractions
available, we experience a kind of restless, self-loathing
ennui.
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Office jobs supply the two main ingredients of mental

agony: cognitive dissonance and prolonged monotony.
This diabolical combination is probably the biggest
source of psychological suffering on the planet, leading
to vast amounts of stress. Dissonance is the mysterious
factor which turns boredom into a major health hazard.
Individualistic westerners are particularly prone to cog-
nitive dissonance because of our need to see ourselves
as stable, self-contained beings. We regard personal
identity as something unchangeable and absolute – a
view which ignores the whole of modern psychology.
Consequently, we underestimate the role of social setting
in influencing our behaviour.
If you spend a lot of time in the same social setting, it’s
eventually going to get to you. If you join the army with
an expectation of remaining aloof from the military men-
tality, then you’re in for a nasty shock. Anyone starting
an office job, expecting to escape office politics, corpo-
rate-speak, employee pettiness and chronic boredom, is
going to have a hard time coming to terms with their
own behaviour in that environment.
Due to the nature of modern workplaces (authority hier-
archies, politics, tangled communication, boredom),
employees often do irrational things. For example: con-
cealing what they’re doing from their boss, acting eva-
sively, making dubious excuses, telling lies, subtly
redirecting blame, feeling intense resentment over trivial
matters, reporting that everything is fine when it isn’t,
etc. Obviously this kind of behaviour doesn’t fit the be-
liefs we have about ourselves as essentially good, de-
cent, rational and professional.
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How can you come to terms with your pathetic em-

ployee-persona if you see yourself as basically honest
and dignified? The only way to deal with your “out of
character” behaviour is to justify and rationalise it. But
that means making excuses, which is even more undig-
nified. The only real escape from this torture is to quit
your job.
A smart person with a boring, pointless job (ie a fairly
typical job) suffers the crippling cognitive dissonance of:
“I am intelligent – most of my days are spent in meaning-
less stupidity”. If there is no choice but to continue the
job (due to money needs and a harsh labour market),
more dissonance arises: “I am a free person – I cannot
escape this situation”.
Most companies promote the idea of freedom with end-
less corporate jargon about “choice” and “opportunity”.
This is a crude attempt to hide the fact that employees
have no free choice. At most, they have an economic
dilemma: continue the job or suffer the humiliation of
welfare.
We’re rats in a behaviourist maze. Behaviourism de-
scribes the external control: the supply or withdrawal of
money and social status. Cognitive dissonance describes
the inner state of mind: confusion, discomfort and impo-
tence. Together, they contain the potentially vast social
discontent resulting from compulsory full employment.
Cognitive dissonance could be dispersed if we replaced
the word “employee” with “slave”. Then there’d be no
confusion about our slave-identities. Most people would
want to see slavery reduced rather than extended. Full
“employment” would be recognised as full slavery. At
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that point there would probably be a social consensus to

dismantle the behaviourist mechanisms that keep us
enslaved.
This article was first published in The Idler, issue 29,
Winter 2001/2.
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NAIVETY TV
A few years ago there was a minor public outcry when
the BBC admitted to spending millions on the evening
news’ opening graphics. These 10 second bursts of
visual expensiveness were apparently intended to convey
a sense of importance, authority and restrained urgency,
so the viewers at home would sit up and pay attention.
Judging from this ultra-high spending, TV bosses are
anxious to have their news programmes taken seriously.
This has led to a presentation of the news which, in its
fanfare and gloss, is similar to professionally staged
business seminars and political conferences. Unlike
those events, however, TV news isn’t meant to be about
persuading, hypnotising or dazzling an audience – so
why spend millions on its presentation?
Well, for one thing it costs money to create a convincing
illusion. The news presents one of the most impressive
magic tricks since the Emperor’s New Clothes. The illu-
sion is of a serious, businesslike, adult world – econom-
ics, politics, stock market indexes and inflation rates –
full of “experts” and presided over by “The Authorities”.
Naturally we feel powerless as individuals to influence
this world since it can be accessed only on TV. The slick
presentation of the illusion – immaculate suits, gleaming
studios, intimidating presenters and those costly visuals
– has the effect of reducing most (relatively shabby)
viewers to a state of infantile awe and low self-esteem.
This news world is built on “conventional wisdom” – ie
“adult” assumptions and clichés which can’t be ques-
tioned, because to do so would be an admission of fool-
ishness or childlike innocence. Presenters and pundits
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obviously like to be seen as authoritative, so they tend to

fall back on safe assumptions rather than explore un-
known areas and risk looking naive.
Unfortunately, it’s precisely this lack of naivety and
innocence which leads to the stagnation of media de-
bate. These childlike qualities are valuable – they have
the potential to embarrass the “experts” and expose the
banality behind the adult gloss. For example, a child
might ask: “why is Daddy always so tired and sad when
he comes home from work?”. As far as I know, no eco-
nomics pundit has ever provided a satisfactory answer
to that question.
Taking such “childish” questions as an inspiring starting
point, I’ve compiled my own list of “naive” questions and
“foolish” answers which I’d like to see featured on a
serious news or current affairs show:
Naive Question: Is school education a good thing?
Foolish Answer: Yes. It’s producing exactly what society
needs: economically frightened clones ready to slot
straight into low-paid menial jobs.
Naive Question: Do we have to be tough on crime?
Foolish Answer: Without crime there’d be no need for
police, lawyers, courts or prisons. That would mean
mass unemployment and the end of society as we know
it. The “tough on crime” policy is okay as long as it
doesn’t reduce crime.
Naive Question: Does advertising make any sense?
Foolish Answer: The huge number of car commercials on
TV makes no sense at all. How can the UK market for
new cars be big enough to justify that amount of adver-
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tising? It’s not as if everyone can afford a new car – most

people have trouble paying their electricity bills. The
saturation advertising for Amoy noodles is similarly
puzzling.
Naive Question: Is the “free market” a good thing?
Foolish Answer: Many people claim the existing system
is not a “free market” but “Monopoly Capitalism” based
on protection rackets (eg land ownership) and usury (eg
banking). This apparently goes back to the Bronze Age,
when spear-wielding thugs extracted rent from peaceful
settlements. These thugs were the first land “owners”
(and the first land “lords”, barons and kings). The people
they exploited and turned into slaves were the true
wealth creators – they grew the food, raised the live-
stock, made the tools and built the dwellings.
Naive Question: Why do adherents of the “free mar-
ket” support the BBC?
Foolish Answer: The market can be trusted to provide
our water, food, transport, electricity, gas, communica-
tions and refuse disposal, but it can’t be trusted to pro-
vide our television programmes. We need the BBC for
that.
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Naive Question: Why does the BBC compete for view-

ers?
Foolish Answer: It seems that the BBC is pretending to
be part of the competitive market, possibly to disguise
the fact that, with its public hand-out funding, it’s es-
sentially the country’s largest welfare recipient.
Naive Question: The BBC allegedly employs 2000 jour-
nalists. What do they all do?
Foolish Answer: That will probably remain a mystery.
Naive Question: Is crime the biggest concern people
have?
Foolish Answer: Statistically, people are more concerned
about their dentist appointments than about crime.
Naive Question: If TV reflects real-life concerns, why
do crime shows outnumber dentistry shows by a
thousand to one?
Foolish Answer: Exactly! And why do TV shows never
feature landlords or bankers?
Naive Question: Nobody seems to care when neigh-
bours’ burglar alarms go off. Would it help to restore
our sense of civic duty if the alarms had a louder,
more piercing sound?
Foolish Answer: Research indicates there would be an
increase in violent incidents due to noise-related stress.
Naive Question: Is food safe?
Foolish Answer: If manufacturers can’t prevent traces of
nuts getting into food, then what other contaminants
can get in? To restore public faith in the honesty of the
food producers, warning labels should be extended to
say: “may contain traces of nuts, rat faeces, rat urine,
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rat parts, dead insects, live insects, human effluvia,

human skin, human hair, toenails, fingernails and as-
sorted dormant and active bacteria of known and un-
known origin.”
Naive Question: Should we teach children to be com-
petitive (putting self first), or to be considerate
(putting others first)?
Foolish Answer: Both. Then we should teach them the
importance of behavioural consistency.
Naive Question: Are money makers the real heroes of
society?
Foolish Answer: “Making money” shouldn’t be confused
with “creating wealth”. Real wealth is what supports and
enhances human life, whereas money is just numbers in
a database. Many wealth creators (inventors, artists,
mothers, etc) are penniless, and many money makers
are useless bloodsuckers.
Naive Question: Are banks friendly, like in the
adverts?
Foolish Answer: Banks make large profits from
“unauthorised overdraft” charges. Credit card companies
make large profits from “late payment” fees. But they tell
us not to go overdrawn or pay late. So they’re fucking
with our heads while they rob us blind. But otherwise
they’re friendly.
Naive Question: Is it really cheating if athletes use
performance-enhancing substances?
Foolish Answer: Only if the substances are ingested. It’s
not considered cheating to enhance performance with
anything worn or surgically implanted (muscle grafts,
organ transplants, bionic limbs, etc).
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Naive Question: Why have breakfast cereals adopted

sensible names (eg “Sustain”, “Perfect Balance”,
“Just Right” and “Advantage”)?
Foolish Answer: Because marketing consultants deter-
mined that 51% of cereal consumers have anal fixations
about diet, health and fitness. Watch out for forthcom-
ing name changes: Bran Flakes to “Nice ’n’ Regular” and
Frosties to “Blood-Glucose Boost”.
Naive Question: Why are there so many beggars in a
booming economy like Britain?
Foolish Answer: It pays more, and humiliates less, than
work in telesales.
Naive Question: Is there anything bad about full em-
ployment?
Foolish Answer: Not if you’re happy to condemn half the
population to minimum-wage slavery, flushing creative
potential down the economic toilet, so a politician can
tell the country how prudent he is. Or to quote Henry
Hazlitt: “Hitler provided full employment. Prisons and
chain gangs have full employment. Coercion can always
provide full employment.”
Naive Question: How much does it cost to create a
job?
Foolish Answer: The New Deal cost over £5bn, and has
created 50,000 jobs which otherwise wouldn’t exist. That
means each job created cost the taxpayer £100,000.
Naive Question: If labour-saving technology is getting
better and cheaper, why are corporate employees
working longer hours?
Foolish Answer: Because they’re slaves.
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Naive Question: Is it true that hard work never hurt

anybody?
Foolish Answer: According to a government report (Men-
tal Health & Stress in the Workplace), working over 48hrs
per week doubles the risk of coronary heart disease.
Naive Question: Why do successful business people
want less regulation and smaller government?
Foolish Answer: Ironically, big business depends on a
complex legal framework and a powerful state apparatus
(to enforce the laws under which businesses and lawyers
prosper). Business people don’t really want less regula-
tion and smaller government – they just want less state
interference in their own activities. They’re quite happy
to see everybody else (particularly the less well off) be
regulated and controlled. Many business people love the
US system, where the government is powerful enough to
fill the prisons with millions of relatively harmless people
who are then available to corporations as cheap, captive
labour.
Naive Question: Is unemployment high or low at the
moment?
Foolish Answer: When governments talk about their
performance in managing the economy, unemployment
is “low”. But when they talk of “cracking down on de-
pendency culture” or “getting tough on the workshy”,
unemployment is “high”.
Naive Question: Why is welfare spending so high?
Foolish Answer: The total yearly UK welfare budget is
£99bn. Roughly half of that goes on pensions. The
amount spent on pensions is increasing because the
population is getting older. Only £5bn is spent annually
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on unemployment benefits. The amount spent on unem-

ployment decreased by £1bn over the last year. As a cost
comparison, bear in mind that a new British-US fighter
plane has a development price-tag of £250bn.
Naive Question: Why should people get pensions?
Foolish Answer: The cost of state pensions is huge, yet
there is widespread poverty amongst old people. Many
elderly people are able-bodied, so let’s put them to work.
There’s no excuse for laziness and dependence – if they
can use a phone or walk a dog, they can take jobs in
telesales or supermarket trolley shepherding.
Naive Question: Who really wants strong leaders?
Foolish Answer: Only sexually repressed people want
strong leaders (according to psychologists).
Winter 2000/1.
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RIGHT TO MOAN
Office work brings out the complainer in me. The point-
less meetings, the unrealistic deadlines, the team-bond-
ing horseshit, the long hours and lack of time off – all
fuel for my endless carping and growing resentment.
Most company managers, unfortunately, are prejudiced
against complainers – they think we should be more
grateful. Their prejudice is due to a fear of what we rep-
resent: the inevitable collapse of the corporate manage-
ment worldview. The complainers, you see, represent the
future, whereas those favoured by management – the
grateful and obedient – belong to a sinking past. Com-
pany executives are fond of talk about “vision”, but the
real vision is in employee disgruntlement. Deep down,
the managers know this – that’s why they’re afraid.
Complaining is taboo in backward societies, authoritar-
ian regimes and modern corporations. Most well-in-
formed people understand that complaints have a
positive social function, and that dissent should not be
buried. Employee discontent should be treated as a
valuable resource. Instead, it’s automatically dismissed
or frowned upon. The reflex management response to
staff disgruntlement is: “you should be glad you have a
job”. This is the medieval logic of “lower expectations”:
no complaint is valid, since things can always be worse
than they are, and we should always be grateful.
The “lower expectations” culture – working longer, for
less pay, and being grateful, etc – though encouraged in
every corporate slave galley, is conspicuously absent
from corporate PR. The PR imagery, in fact, communi-
cates utopian “higher expectations”, as expressed in
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slogans such as “we’re aiming higher”, “now even bet-

ter”, “the future is bright”, etc. The Company directors
believe their own PR, and ignore rumours of discontent.
Their boardrooms are cheerful places – full of optimistic
talk, high-tech perspectives and futuristic management
buzzwords.
But behind the executive vanity and PR cosmetics, in-
dustrial-age hierarchical bureaucracies and Fordist
production-line methods continue to operate. Desks are
still lined up in rows. Workplaces are still bleak, central-
ised production hives, and workers are still treated as
insectoid units of productivity. The high-pressure, traf-
fic-jam work culture looks more like hell than utopia,
but “business leaders” and politicians have no plans to
change the situation.
In November, 1999, call centre workers held a nation-
wide strike in protest against “a 19th century manage-
ment style, impossible targets, stress and overwork”.
Protesters were particularly unhappy with the threat of
disciplinary action against workers failing to complete
calls within 285 seconds. The Guardian quoted a London
School of Economics researcher as saying, “the possibili-
ties for monitoring behaviour and measuring output in
call centres is amazing to behold – the tyranny of the
assembly line is but a Sunday school picnic compared
with the control that management can exercise in com-
puter telephony”.
TV commercials give a false picture of call centres – they
show relaxed employees taking customer calls in pleas-
ant surroundings. The reality is thousands of workers
packed together in giant sheds, relentlessly answering
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telephone calls to predetermined scripts. The term

“sweatshop” comes to mind. Visits to the lavatory are
rationed and monitored. One of the software packages
commonly used by call centre managers is marketed as
“Total Control Made Easy”.
As we zoom into a bright new future, traffic congestion
and parking space are becoming difficult problems. One
far-sighted solution, devised by leading government
thinkers, is to advise employees to give each other lifts
to work. This lets the government off the hook, and
dodges important questions such as: “must we always
travel to work?”, and: “must we always work?” A nation-
wide survey revealed that 60 percent of workers see
their work as being of no use to society – so why not pay
people to stay at home enjoying themselves? Think of all
the public benefits – less traffic, less stress, less pollu-
tion, lower medical costs and more people enjoying life.
The usual argument against utopian social policy is
economic rectitude – that, as a society, we can’t afford it.
Buckminster Fuller, the famous utopian polymath,
claimed that this economic argument is just a conven-
ient excuse for government and corporate apathy. Fuller
argued that the dominant economic worldview – that of
“not enough to go around for everyone” – is seriously
flawed, due to being based on outdated inventories of
world resources.
In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that since world
population was growing faster than known resources,
poverty was inevitable for the majority of humanity.
Malthus’s forecast of ongoing scarcity, hardship and
starvation had an enormous impact on economists and
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politicians. For many years, his prediction was cited as a

reason not to give welfare to the poor – all attempts to
remove poverty were seen as futile. Malthus was later
discredited – his forecast was incorrect – but his gloomy
influence left economics with a nickname: “the dismal
science”.
Fuller claimed that the Malthusian ideology of “lower
expectations” still pervades mainstream politics and
economics. Politicians continue to remind us that we
must “make sacrifices”, “cut back”, “tighten our belts”,
etc. Of course, it’s always the poor people who make the
sacrifices, not politicians or the well-off. Malthusianism
shames the poor into accepting their situation with stoic
resignation, rather than raising their expectations. If
there isn’t enough to go around, then you should be
grateful for what you already have. Understandably,
Malthus was very popular with the ruling classes.
Fuller spent much of his life challenging the Malthusian
notion of “not enough to go around”. He documented the
technological trend of extracting more and more life-
supporting wealth from less and less raw material. For
example, he compared a modern communications satel-
lite, weighing a fraction of a ton, with the 75,000 tons of
transatlantic cable that it replaces and outperforms.
This process of “more from less”, he said, is accelerating
faster than population growth and is removing scarcity
from the planet.
Over the last few decades, Fuller’s claims have been
scientifically vindicated. Current inventories of world
resources show overwhelming abundance of sustainable
life-enhancing wealth – enough to maintain a high living
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standard for every person on the planet. Scarcity now

has to be artificially induced to preserve an obsolete
system of “haves” and “have-nots”. Most people suspect
as much when they hear that, for decades, governments
have been paying farmers not to grow food.
Fuller regarded the “us versus them” paranoid-competi-
tive business world as a highly destructive combination
of Malthus and Social Darwinism. Humanity’s real mis-
sion, as he saw it, was not to fight competitors, but, “to
make the world work for 100 percent of humanity in the
shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation
without ecological offense or the disadvantage of any-
one.” In 1980, Fuller asserted his confidence in the
practical realisation of this utopian vision:
“For the first time in history it is now possible to take
care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any
have ever known. Only ten years ago the more-with-less
technology reached the point where this could be done.
All humanity now has the option to become enduringly
successful.”
Meanwhile, back in bureaucratsville, Fuller’s message is
yet to be heard. Our reflexes have been conditioned to
dismiss ‘utopia’ as synonymous with the ‘unrealistic’ or
‘impossible’. Corporations see technology as just another
way to gain competitive advantage. Business people
think they have the “bottom line” in hard-nosed realism:
it’s a brutal world and we must all compete for survival
by pecking each other to death like ducks. And the func-
tion of advertising and PR is to put a warm, friendly
gloss on all this, so the consumers don’t die of fright
before they get a chance to buy the products.
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Fortunately, a minority of economic commentators are

starting to echo Fuller’s arguments. Charles Hampden-
Turner, in The Seven Cultures of Capitalism, notes that
“we, in the English-speaking economies, are still at war
with each other, fighting for scraps of wealth in a scar-
city contrived by our own beliefs.” Hampden-Turner
then suggests that we redefine capitalism as “a function
of evolving co-operation, which spreads outward, push-
ing competition to its own boundaries” – a notion very
much in tune with what Fuller was saying half a century
ago.
Perhaps, as Fuller claimed, humans have a habit of
trying all the stupid approaches before hitting on the
intelligent ones. Unfortunately, this seems to be a slow
process, with a time-lag of decades or centuries before
stupidity is acknowledged. Those who plan to accelerate
this process – the complainers, the dissenters – should
be honoured, as they may be our best hope.
Summer 2000.
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DEBT CULT
A shortened, edited version of this article was published
in Sleaze magazine (formerly Sleaze Nation), June 2004.
The average debt per UK household is around £7,000,
excluding mortgages.1 Politicians want us to believe this
is due to irresponsible spendthrifts abusing easy credit,
but according to recent research at least one in five
people in Britain resorts to debt to cover basic living
costs.2
Of course, some people do use credit to fund greedy
lifestyles, but overall spiralling debt has more to do with
Britain’s low-wage culture and high poverty level. The
government doesn’t want you to think about this, with
politically sensitive issues such as student loans in the
news.
Britons spend nearly three times more on their credit
cards than the rest of the EU put together. The nation’s
credit card bill has increased by 76 percent since 1998.3
Part of this increase is due to highly seductive, but often
misleading, credit card advertising. According to the
Office of Fair Trading, one in five credit card ads breaks
the law – usually involving misleading information on
interest charges.4
While banks and credit companies make record profits
from criminally misleading promotions, they’re quick to
lecture us on responsibility. Their PR dovetails with that
of lying politicians, painting a picture of an economy
compromised only by feckless consumers who exploit
and abuse the system. In other words, the problem is
you, not them.
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The first thing to remember if you’re in debt is don’t

swallow their lies. Don’t allow them to lay a guilt trip on
you. Don’t let them dictate your “moral” or “responsible”
options. They will screw you without a second thought –
you owe them nothing ethically. Once that’s clear, you’re
free to consider all options, including walking away from
your debts.
Extreme though it sounds, personal bankruptcy and
fleeing the country are valid options for escaping debt.
Ask not if it’s “responsible”, but if you can get away with
it. Several UK students have already decided that, with
tens of thousands of pounds of debt, their best option is
to declare themselves bankrupt, leaving them with a
“clean slate”. The Guardian recently quoted an inde-
pendent financial adviser as saying: “If you want to bum
around for the rest of your life, then bankruptcy might
not be such a bad idea. But if you ever want to settle
down and buy a house, then you would have a lot of
trouble getting a mortgage or any other sort of credit”.5
But that might be overstating things, since after six
years the record of your bankruptcy is removed from
your credit file.
If you default on a debt, expect to receive threatening
letters. With unsecured debts, the threats are relatively
toothless. Depending on the amount of debt, it may not
be cost-effective for them to pursue you, especially if
you’ve left the country. Since, on average, only a small
proportion of bad credit card debt is recovered by credi-
tors, you might get away with offering a lump sum set-
tlement of much less than the total amount you owe.
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You may be threatened with a county court judgement

(CCJ), bailiffs, etc. Don’t let them frighten you. Despite
what they might tell you, bailiffs aren’t allowed to force
their way into your home, provided they haven’t been
inside before. Creditors rely on scare tactics. To avoid
being scared, research CCJs, bailiffs, walking posses-
sion orders, individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs)
and anything else that might affect you. Find out from
internet newsgroups what people in similar circum-
stances have done to escape debt. Avoid companies
selling “debt management services”.
The only worthwhile advice applicable to all cases of
personal debt is: lose your naivety concerning the role of
debt in the economic system. You’ll then be less likely to
succumb to the stigma and humiliation of financial
“failure” – you’ll be less easily pushed around. Consider
yourself naive if you think you live in a free market
economy.
Given the entrenched corporate propaganda on the “suc-
cess” of the so-called free market, this will need explain-
ing. Remember the main reason for spiralling debt –
Britain’s low-wage culture. According to the National
Consumer Council, one in five households are in debt to
water companies, one in seven can’t afford their energy
bills, and one in twenty have had their phone cut off.6 It
seems doubtful these people are sacrificing basic neces-
sities to fund spending sprees.
Unless the government fails to read its own reports, it
already knows the truth: that one in five UK households
lives on a poverty-level income.7 Wages at the lower end
of the market are less now, in real terms, than in the
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1970s. This seems to contradict the media image of

contemporary Britain as full of affluent yuppies – until
you realise the media image reflects how credit enables
us to appear affluent even in hardship. Debt is disguised
poverty.
The truly affluent get into debt, too, of course – for ex-
ample, 48 percent of people earning £60,000 or more fail
to clear their credit card debts each month or have other
unsecured debts.8 But the percentage of people in debt
gets higher as you move down the income scale.9 The
low-paid and unemployed are worst hit, often falling
prey to loan sharks or “debt consolidation” firms.
As usual, with ominous social problems, the authorities
blame anything but the system. First they blame
consumer irresponsibility, then they blame consumers’
financial illiteracy. The solution, we’re told, is educating
people to handle their finances more responsibly. But
this simply diverts us from the real problem: a finance-
capital system masquerading as a “free market”, whose
primary function is to benefit the rich, while putting
everyone else in debt.
The identification of capitalism with “free enterprise” is
about as accurate as identifying a sweatshop with a
stroll in the park. A real “free market” would allow alter-
native currencies. The existing capitalist system does
not – the legally enforced money-issuing monopoly
(Bank of England) keeps interest at an artificially high
level. This is central to the personal debt problem, be-
cause if competition were allowed in the distribution of
alternative currencies, the cost of credit would fall to the
level needed only to administer it (well below 1 percent).
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The high level of interest we pay is a monopoly-charge –

a forced “tribute” to usurers – it has nothing to do with a
free market.
Debt functions in this system as a social control mecha-
nism, making us anything but “free”. You can’t afford to
be choosy about jobs if you’re in debt. Debt makes us
financially insecure. The people who run the economy
see this as a good thing. US Federal Reserve chair, Alan
Greenspan, was reported as saying that insecure work-
ers are good for the economy, as they keep inflation low
(by being too scared to risk asking for wage increases).10
Saturation advertising increases our insecurities by
exerting enormous psychological pressure. It’s often
targeted at children, so parents feel like failures if they
don’t conform. The message is that depriving your chil-
dren is more irresponsible than buying on credit. So
people choose the “responsible” option of going further
into debt.
Then the government lectures us on the irresponsibility
of “buy now, pay later”. This is the same government
that embraced the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) as a
way to fund hospitals, roads, prisons, etc. PFIs are the
ultimate in irresponsible “pay later” funding – Private
Eye magazine recently compared them to “taking out a
mortgage on a credit card”.11 Politicians are the last
people to tell us how we should run our finances.
Student loans are another example of the gross misman-
agement of the country’s finances. Britain’s overall
wealth continues to grow, due to advancing technology,
rises in productivity, etc. Yet we’re supposed to believe
there’s not enough money to fund the level of education
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that corporate Britain requires. Don’t swallow this lie.

Proportional to growth in national wealth, Britain could
afford to vastly expand higher education without bur-
dening students with debt. The problem isn’t lack of
money.
Most of the country’s wealth is sucked up by big busi-
ness and never returns as tax revenue. This is partly
due to the remarkable ability of large corporations to
utilise offshore tax havens and tax loopholes. The Guard-
ian estimated that Britain loses £85 billion per year in
corporate tax avoidance – more than enough to pay the
country’s higher education costs without a single stu-
dent going into debt.12
Do you ever get the feeling you’re being ripped off?
You’re not paranoid – you really are being ripped off. The
free-market bible, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations,
warned that whenever merchants meet they tend to
conspire against the general public. It also warned that
monopolies distort the market so that it’s no longer free.
This is Adam Smith, not Marx – worth remembering
whenever defenders of the existing system try to pigeon-
hole its critics as communists.
It’s no coincidence that record bank profits are an-
nounced at the same time as record household debt.
Personal debt isn’t just big business – it’s central to the
system; it maintains the status quo, the monopolisation
of wealth by a small minority. Given this structural role
of debt, it’s remarkable that anyone would feel like a
failure for going into debt – or feel irresponsible for walk-
ing away from a debt. But such is the insidious power of
corporate propaganda.
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References:
(1) Bank of England, Quarterly Bulletin, Autumn 2003;
(2) KPMG survey, quoted by Press Association, 2/9/03;
(3) Evening News, Edinburgh, 17/3/04; (4) Ibid;
(5) Guardian Money, 11/8/03; (6) National Consumer
Council report, September 2003; (7) Joseph Rowntree
Foundation report, December 2003 (2001/2002 figures);
(8) creditaction.org.uk, 30/3/04; (9) Ibid; (10) US Congres-
sional testimony, 26/2/1997; (11) Private Eye, 19/3/04;
(12) The Guardian, 12/4/02.
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ANXIETY ATTACK
Recently, after resting for a year, I prepared myself to
return to work for a large bureaucratic company. The
prospect of going back into the corporate world filled me
with dread, but my money had run out so it looked like I
had no choice. I got the job after a successful act of
deception at the job interview. This involved hiding all
my real motivations and feelings, and over-using words
like “opportunity” and “challenge.” The interviewer
seemed convinced that I was there out of free choice and
enthusiasm, rather than financial dilemma and survival
anxiety.
Financial anxiety turns most of us into “useful idiots”, a
term used by the intelligence community, meaning those
who unwittingly end up serving the purposes of others,
while still believing in their own freedom and autonomy.
In the everyday world of tedious wage-slavery, useful
idiots can be identified by their claim to like their jobs.
When so many people seem to enjoy being economic
slaves, or at least pretend to, one begins to suspect
something beyond deluded sentimentality – something
sinister and pathological.
We’re living in an anxiety culture and we’re driven by
fear. If that sounds like an exaggeration, take a look at
some figures. According to a recent major survey com-
missioned by the government, more than 10 percent of
the population suffer from a neurotic anxiety disorder1.
The most common problem is a mixed anxiety and de-
pressive disorder, affecting 7 percent of people. Vast
quantities of tranquillisers and anti-depressants are
prescribed in the UK – eighty million prescriptions in
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1994, and rapidly rising since2. Sixty percent of employ-

ees suffer from feelings of insecurity and anxiety. Forty
three percent have problems sleeping because of work
worries. Fifty four percent fret over inadequate income3.
This statistical picture seems at odds with the grinning,
self-assured yuppie reality beamed into our living rooms
during commercial breaks. The advertisers portray a
world where all normal people drive expensive new cars
and smile perpetually. The message is: good sex-bonding
is available only to those who live like this. The use of
sex in advertising may seem crude and obvious, but the
effect, through repetition, is to emotionally sensitise
social comparison, so people feel humiliated driving old
cars, for example. No one is really immune from these
social-comparison anxieties, not even the marketers
themselves – a recent survey shows advertising execu-
tives to be “plagued by self-doubt and insecurity”4.
There are strong vested interests in keeping public anxi-
ety at a high level. Anxious people make good consum-
ers – they tend to eat and drink compulsively, need more
distractions (newspapers, TV, etc) and more external
buttressing of their fragile self-image through lifestyle
products and status symbols. Insurance companies and
the whole financial services industry make billions from
our financial insecurities. The unsubtle targeting of our
fears is evident in adverts for vehicle recovery services,
cars, alarms, security systems, mobile phones, private
health care, chewing gum, deodorant.. and so on. Em-
ployers benefit if the workers fear losing their jobs –
fearful people are less likely to complain or rebel. Stud-
ies show that people are more suggestible and compliant
when anxious. Politicians quote “public fears” as justifi-
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cation for more freedom-eroding legislation. Insecure

populations show a tendency to elect authoritarian gov-
ernments. You can probably think of many more exam-
ples. In a word, governments and corporations gladly
reap the harvests of high public anxiety.
Without necessarily implying any large conspiracy, it’s
true to say that anxiety can be induced in a population
by constantly focusing on the threat of crime in an exag-
gerated way. This has the ‘advantage’ of directing fear
towards ‘bad’ individuals who break the law, rather than
the institutions which make the laws. In a recent MORI
poll, half of those questioned believed that tabloid news-
papers have a vested interest in making people more
afraid of crime. In 1995, the makers of Frontline, a
Channel 4 documentary on crime, requested interviews
with the editors of the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Sun, Daily
and Sunday Express, Today, People and Star, to ask how
they justified their sensationalised crime coverage. They
all refused to be interviewed5.
The news headlines often give the impression of paedo-
philes or killers on every street corner, murdering every
passing child. The official statistics present a much
different picture. Between 1983 and 1993, on average
only five children were murdered by strangers each year
in England and Wales, according to Home Office fig-
ures6. No, that wasn’t a misprint – five – check it out.
Most child homicides are in fact committed by the par-
ents. Over the last 25 years there has been no increase
in child murder by strangers. The overall murder rate
(all ages) is the same now as it was in 1857 (roughly 13
per million of the population per year)7.
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Unfortunately, many people believe the crime hype. A

third of elderly women fear going outside, but only one
in 4000 will be assaulted8. Statistically, the elderly and
young children are the groups least at risk from attack
— but because the newspapers cover all violent crimes
involving the young and the very old, they seem com-
mon. Meanwhile, the climate of fear being created is out
of all proportion to the real threat of crime for most peo-
ple.
One effect of our over-stimulated fear of crime is in-
creased paranoia and suspicion. If I take a stroll
through the park, will the woman ahead think I’m stalk-
ing her? If I see a child in distress, do I assist or mind
my own business? Some school teachers were recently
reported to be in difficulty deciding whether to apply
sun-protection lotion to young children. On one hand
there was the risk of skin cancer, and on the other the
risk of child sex-abuse accusation. Welcome to anxiety
society.
Most anxiety results from what we’ve been thinking,
rather than external events. We’re immersed in fear-
inducing belief systems, but it’s invisible to us, like wa-
ter to fish. Unfortunately, exposure to these fearful
beliefs starts in early childhood, before we can develop
any intellectual defences. We receive a thorough ‘anxiety
conditioning’, which is our real childhood education.
Schools are factories for turning carefree souls into obe-
dient, economically frightened clones. Children are also
exposed daily to the anxious thoughts of their parents –
generally known as “parental concern”, although the less
sentimentally inclined may prefer to call it neurosis.
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Parents demonstrate how loving and responsible they

are by worrying all the time. This is regarded as perfectly
normal in our society.
So what are the main anxiety-inducing beliefs? Perhaps
the most insidious is “original sin” – the notion that, in
essence, we’re morally ‘bad’, and must redeem ourselves
through hard work and suffering. This belief is the en-
emy of idlers. Its poisonous tentacles reach into your
mind, causing you to see life as a burden to endure,
rather than as a fantastic adventure. It manifests as the
idea that you’re infinitely undeserving – that reward, ie
happiness, will always be contingent upon the endur-
ance of some unpleasant activity such as work. It sur-
faces as the feeling that you’re not good enough, or that
something is wrong with you – a tendency exploited to
the maximum by big business. It also makes you feel
guilty.
The original sin worldview can, however, be subverted
with psychological gimmicks. For example, try believing
that you deserve to be paid for doing nothing. Dismiss
the notion that you have to ‘earn’ anything. You earned
your life by being born – now you deserve to relax. Quit
your job and go on holiday, or call in sick as often as
possible. Remove all forms of guilt from your mind. Go
to extremes of laziness and indulge yourself deluxe-style
every day. Spend the day in bed watching videos, eating
Belgian chocolates and drinking Green Chartreuse, or
whatever gets you relaxed and high – then take it easier
next day.
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Another insidious anxiety-inducer to watch out for is the

belief that you should be responsible. This puts people
under tremendous strain. You don’t choose your genetic
make-up or the conditions in which you grow up, yet all
the unfortunate things that happen are your fault. This
sense of responsibility is obviously false – you can’t even
be responsible for your next thought. True responsibility
would require all-seeing, all-knowing divine power – it’s
not something for fallible individuals to attempt.
Of course, the real function of “individual responsibility”
is social conformity. Society holds you accountable if
you don’t comply with its definition of your responsibili-
ties. It’s a big social con-trick – with the “responsible
individual” as dupe. The attraction of responsibility (all
con-tricks have an attraction) is that it allows people
total conformity without removing the facade of individu-
ality – it’s the kind of concept that advertising agencies
dream about.
Responsibility sees everything as a problem needing a
solution – usually involving endless work and expendi-
ture. It’s part of a conspiracy of stupidity undermining
claims that we can work less and take it easy. Any intel-
ligent attempt to drastically cut working hours is re-
sisted on the basis that it’s irresponsible. As a result we
continue to work for a responsible (but arbitrary) 40
hours a week instead of a more sensible 40 minutes.
Politicians – the experts on responsibility – see jobless-
ness as the ultimate irresponsible lifestyle. It never oc-
curs to them that their idea of responsibility might not
be universal. Many people feel a “responsibility” to quit
work in order to widen their knowledge and develop
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their potential. From this viewpoint, work is an “irre-

sponsible” cop-out – a last refuge of the fearful and igno-
rant.
References:
(1) Study commissioned by the Department of Health, as
reported in The Independent, 15 Dec 1994. (2) World in
Action and Radio Times, 15 Oct 1994. (3) NOP poll, quoted
by World in Action, Oct 1995. (4) The Times, 22 Nov 1996.
(5) Frontline, Channel 4, 4 Oct 1995. (6) Sunday Times, 6
Aug 1995. (7) The Independent, 25 Sept 1996. (8) The
Times, 11 Sept 1996.
1999, and also in the Guardian’s “Editor” supplement on
8th October 1999.
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THE PURITAN WORK ETHIC

Phil Laut, the American financial author, has defined
hard work as “doing what you don’t want to do”, and
suggests that to operate with integrity, you should forget
work and do what you want. This revolutionary view-
point directly opposes certain beliefs which have become
codified into our work ethic courtesy of the Puritans.
Puritan sects were greatly over-represented among the
early major industrialists (quoted in Ashton’s History of
the Industrial Revolution), and their belief that suffering
is required to redeem our ‘original sin’ as human beings
became part of their work ethic. This is a notion which
continues to underlie our attitude towards work even
today.
This is why, in our society, work is closely related to,
and often motivated by, guilt. To sweeten their view of
work and provide positive motivation, the Puritans be-
lieved that honest toil, if persevered with, led to mun-
dane and spiritual rewards. The modern equivalents of
these archaic religious beliefs are:
i) That hard work is the main causative factor in pro-
ducing material wealth.
ii) That hard work is character building and morally
good.
The available statistics don’t support the belief that hard
work leads to wealth – for example, US government fig-
ures from the eighties showed the average savings of a
person reaching retirement age in North America to be
less than $500. This is the typical level of financial re-
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ward a person can expect for forty years of full-time

hard work – based on government data for an entire
generation of working Americans.
Whatever its correlation with material wealth, hard work
is undoubtedly seen as virtuous – the greatest tribute
paid to the deceased seems to be “worked hard all his/
her life”, although this epitaph sounds more appropriate
for an item of machinery than a human being. There is,
in fact, a lot of evidence to suggest that our work ethic is
extreme and pathological in its effects. For example, a
major UK survey (quoted recently by The Guardian)
showed that 6 out of 10 British workers dislike their
jobs, suffer insecurity and stress, fret over inadequate
income, feel that their work isn’t of use to society, and
find themselves exhausted by the time they get home. A
1995 National Opinion Poll (NOP) revealed that 50% of
British workers say work makes them depressed, and
43% have problems sleeping because of work. Unless
you regard stress-related illness as character building,
these findings don’t exactly support the idea of work
being morally uplifting.
The hard work ethic has also conditioned us to see hap-
piness as something that must be earned through toil.
In effect, this is saying you have to suffer in order to get
happiness, or to put it another way, you must be un-
happy to be happy. The underlying idea behind this
insanity is that you are infinitely undeserving – reward,
ie happiness, will always be contingent upon the endur-
ance of some unpleasant activity. The problem with this
way of thinking is that it endlessly perpetuates itself –
you can never totally relax because nobody ever comes
along to say, once and for all, that you’ve worked enough
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(the religious beliefs which originally gave rise to this

mindset, don’t permit you to relax until after you’ve
died).
A popular cliché says “nothing worthwhile is easy”. An-
other version of the same idea has been used as a politi-
cal slogan: “if it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working”. Beliefs
like these don’t only describe viewpoints, they also pro-
gram our expectations. You are effectively programming
yourself to experience hurt and hardship if you accept
this idea of “no pain, no gain”. How can you despise ease
and laziness then not feel guilty when you take a rest?
Try an alternative slogan: “anything worthwhile is best
done without effort”, or “if you can’t enjoy it, don’t do it”.
According to classical economic theory, wealth is created
from land, labour and capital. Increasingly though, infor-
mation is becoming the primary source of wealth. If you
drill for oil, you need precise information about where to
drill. As knowledge-intensive markets grow in proportion
to labour-intensive industry, information is overtaking
labour (ie hard work) as an important wealth-creating
factor. As a business analyst, I observed employees in
busy offices rushing so much to get things done, that
they never stopped to consider if there was any point to
it. Quality thought (efficient reception, integration and
transmission of information) doesn’t usually result from
hard work and stress. The human brain processes com-
plex information better when the person is relaxed and
happy (adrenaline addiction notwithstanding).
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One futurist dream is that technology will eventually

free people from the necessity of hard work. This doesn’t
mean that all-day leisure and enjoyment would be im-
posed – those who like being miserable could construct
their own simulations of busy offices or noxious factories
to work in. But for everybody else, drudgery and toil
would be pointless and obsolete. The fact that we are
nowhere near manifesting such a dream has more to do
with our attitudes and beliefs than with the current
state of technology. Currently there are alternatives to
the 9-5 work culture (job-sharing, teleworking etc) which
are forward-looking and advantageous to everybody (the
Institute of Manpower Studies has found that employees
who work ‘non-standard’ hours tend to be more efficient,
enthusiastic and committed), but which are still very
rare. The Information Age is here, but in terms of work
patterns we cling to the attitudes of an mechanical-
industrial culture steeped in the Puritan ethic (Method-
ists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Wesleyans and other
puritanical sects were greatly over-represented among
the major industrialists quoted in Ashton’s History of the
Industrial Revolution).
A strange effect of the ‘dark ages’ view of work as atone-
ment, is the idea that we should enjoy it, or at least try
to look as if we’re enjoying it. By happily accepting our
punishment (ie daily hard work) we demonstrate our
moral fibre. This also explains why (according to the US
figures quoted above) the average person is prepared to
work forty hours per week for no great financial reward –
the typical person believes he doesn’t deserve to be paid
for enjoying himself.
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In order to more deeply understand current attitudes to

work, there is an interesting exercise you can try: spend
a whole day in bed for no particular reason (ie don’t wait
until you are ill or exhausted). Don’t do anything, just lie
in bed and doze all day, without feeling ashamed of your
laziness. This could be the greatest business challenge
you have ever faced. The acceptance of laziness breaks
the link between guilt and work which chains us to
primitive patterns from the past.
This article was originally published in In Business
magazine, December 1996.
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OBSOLETE FREE-MARKET
METAPHORS
“There is no such thing as society”.
So said Mrs Thatcher. She apparently meant that “soci-
ety” can be seen only as an abstraction or cultural meta-
phor. Adherents of free-market economics have often
expressed a dislike of terms like “society” and “social
concern”. The market system has traditionally had an
individualistic bias – its central premise is that the mar-
ket registers choices made by separate, sovereign indi-
viduals who freely consume for themselves.
If every economic effect is seen to result from the free
choices of autonomous, atomistic consumers and entre-
preneurs, then “society” will be viewed as a nebulous
metaphor with little economic relevance. Those who
blame their financial problems on an aspect of “society”
are unlikely to receive any sympathy from free-
marketeers.
Ironically, critics of the competitive market system
would argue that “free market” is itself a metaphor, an
idealised abstraction whose central premise fails to take
into account the vast array of social factors affecting
human motivation and behaviour. For instance, social
phenomena such as advertising, state education and the
mass media inevitably tend to influence the value sys-
tems which determine what individual consumers will
buy. The notion of a ‘totally rational’ individual, com-
pletely immune from ‘social’ influences, seems naive.
And contrary to free-market thinking, ‘society’ has as-
pects which can’t be explained or predicted in terms of
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the rational choices made by its individual constituents.

To view a complex phenomenon like a human society as
no more than the sum of its parts is to subscribe to a
kind of reductionism belonging to the 18th century
(which was when classical free-market economic theory
originated).
Only Britain and the USA put individual self-interest so
far above notions of ‘social concern’. The European capi-
talist model is more ‘communal’ in its emphasis, as
reflected, for instance, by the social chapter of the
Maastricht treaty. Meanwhile, Japan – possibly the most
economically successful of all capitalist nations – has a
more communitarian model than even Europe. To the
Japanese, the main purpose of business is to benefit
society.
When we talk in terms of ‘communal’ biases here, we are
not referring to communism or statism, but to cultural
perspectives which recognise that wealth-creation may
not be an entirely individualistic pursuit.
Of course, there are good reasons for the Anglo-Ameri-
can belief that economic self-interest must take prec-
edence over social concern. Adam Smith observed that
merchants acting from selfish motivations tended to
produce more of public value than those motivated by
benevolence towards society. The reasons for this are
easy enough to follow – self-interest fuels competitive-
ness and, according to classical economists, shifting
resources to those who compete successfully and away
from those who compete badly is a process which pro-
motes economic growth, thus benefiting everyone.
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But just as the metaphors of Freudian psychology mir-

ror the technology of the times (eg hydraulic build-up of
pressure, letting off steam, etc), classical economic
metaphors obviously reflect the Newtonian mechanical
view of the world. There is a almost mathematical satis-
faction to be gained from understanding classical eco-
nomics, as if predicting economic effects is a simple
problem of physics. Indeed, the market ‘mechanism’ is
regarded as a sort of universal scientific law by classical
economists and business people in Britain and America.
Professor Paul Ormerod, of the Henley Centre forecast-
ing organisation, has pointed out that Western economic
theory has been conspicuously unsuccessful at making
the kind of accurate predictions you would expect from a
scientific discipline. He goes as far as saying that little in
standard economics texts is known to be true, and that
orthodox economics still has no effective answer for
basic problems such as unemployment.
So is the classical view of the effectiveness of self-inter-
est within a ‘free market’ a universal law or just a cul-
tural prejudice favouring the greedy and predatory? In
their book, The Seven Cultures of Capitalism, Charles
Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars describe Adam
Smith’s doctrine of self-interest as “perhaps the world’s
leading example of cultural bias and historical circum-
stance disguised as a principal of science”. They argue
that market forces depend on specific cultural contexts
and shouldn’t be seen to act in an impersonal, universal
way. Their book is rich in examples which contradict the
fundamental assumptions of mainstream British eco-
nomics.
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Sweden, for example, has been something of an enigma

to classical economists. A strong social democratic wel-
fare state, with substantial government control moderat-
ing economic fluctuations, has put Sweden in the “soft”
category of capitalism (but with very little industry na-
tionalised, it is outside the “socialist” categorisation). If
business is necessarily a ruthless struggle between self-
interested competitors, how did Sweden’s “softness”
(social equality, humanitarianism, welfare and environ-
mental concern) lead to such a strong economy? Sweden
has had one of the world’s highest standards of living (in
1992 GDP per person was $12,000 higher than in the
UK), and working conditions and labour-management
relations have generally been excellent. Economists
rationalised that Sweden was a small, insulated excep-
tion to universally harsh economic laws, but, in fact,
since the late nineteenth century Sweden has been a
world economy highly exposed to international trends.
Similarly, in Germany, Holland and Japan, benevolence
towards ‘society’ (as expressed towards employees, cus-
tomers and local communities) is very much part of their
economic strategies, rather than simply a hoped-for
effect of the market mechanism. This tendency hasn’t
harmed the economic growth of these countries (from
1979 to 1991, manufacturing grew by 33.3% in Ger-
many and 60.4% in Japan, compared with 4.9% in Brit-
ain. Also, GDP per capita in Britain continued to lose
comparative advantage with these countries during this
period).
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Britain’s leading companies are extremely profitable,

and, indeed, competitiveness tends to be measured here
solely by the level of profit extracted. Obsession with
profit, however, is not a common factor in successful
economies. In Germany the pursuit of technical excel-
lence and service to society through producing quality
products is more valued than profit making. The Japa-
nese see capitalism as a system in which communities
serve consumers, rather than one in which individuals
compete to extract profits – profitability is the means,
not the end. With the emphasis less on the short-term
profits of the individual, there is a degree of co-operative
activity in German and Japanese industry which is quite
alien to the British and American “lean and mean” ap-
proach.
From the western perspective of analytical ‘either/or’
logic, we must choose either co-operation or competition
– we can’t have both at the same time. Or, to put it in
terms of the mechanistic metaphor, we can’t push and
pull simultaneously. So, following classical economics,
we choose competition and get rid of co-operation. How-
ever, using metaphors of “integrated wholes” (eg “or-
ganic”, “cybernetic” or “structured network” models),
much of European and Japanese industry has learnt
how to reconcile co-operation with competition. This is
an especially important trend in the area of high tech-
nology.
But what does reconciling co-operation and competition
mean in practice? The question we should probably ask
is: What is the entity that competes? – an individual, a
company, an industry, or a nation? Early on in the de-
velopment of capitalism, individuals competed with
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other individuals, then, later, competition was largely

between companies whose employees co-operated (al-
though fierce competition is still encouraged between
individual employees in the UK and US – one effect of
this is that employees are out to get what they can for
themselves, which is often not in the interests of the
company).
Japan has spread the level of co-operation further still,
in the keiretsu (a co-operative conglomerate), whose
divisional companies co-operate and share technological
knowledge and resources (in Anglo-American conglomer-
ates, the divisions compete with each other for the fund-
ing of the holding company, and share nothing). Thus,
the development of capitalism may be seen as “...a func-
tion of evolving co-operation, which spreads outward,
pushing competition to its own boundaries” (The Seven
Cultures of Capitalism).
In order to compete successfully at the national level,
European nations have largely adopted the internally co-
operative approach, in contrast with the UK, where the
political strategy has been to increase internal competi-
tion. The UK approach derives from a belief in the uni-
versal nature of the market mechanism – ie the
conviction that all-out competition will work at all levels.
Describing economic progress in terms of evolving co-
operation, rather than ruthless self-interested struggle,
may have important benefits, particularly in knowledge-
intensive markets (eg high technology), where a co-op-
erative free flow of information throughout a company
(or industry) is likely to prove more effective than jealous
guarding of privileged knowledge by ambitious individu-
201
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als. In fact, the information technology revolution is

increasingly leading to commercial scenarios which the
mechanistic metaphors of classical economic are unable
to deal with. Countries which insist on clinging to out-
moded economic dogmas will very likely fall behind in
the technology race.
The metaphors we use to describe economic success
have a flip side that we can’t easily escape from. If we
believe that a competitive and individualistic (rather
than co-operative and communitarian) approach is the
way to succeed, then it follows that economic failure
must be the fault of individuals who aren’t competing
hard enough, rather than social factors. We therefore
resent the poor for their lack of individual initiative, and
despise people who blame their problems on social cir-
cumstances.
This emphasis on the individual’s sole responsibility for
achieving success fails to take into account the role of
social consensus in defining “success”. We often hear
politicians talking piously about the responsibility of
individuals to contribute to society, but they rarely say
what they mean, which is that people should conform to
their definition of “contribute”. Society holds us account-
able for not complying with its definition of our indi-
vidual responsibilities.
The tendency to polarise economic issues, eg private vs
public sector, individual vs community, market vs social
concerns, hierarchy vs equality etc, reflects the cultural
metaphors we use. Mrs Thatcher was certainly admired
for being resolute in her polarisations, but is it surpris-
202
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ing if we find that the combined metaphors of ancient

Aristotelian ‘either/or’ logic and 18th century economics
are inadequate for the realities of the 21st century?
Acknowledgement: This article makes use of some of the
ideas expressed in The Seven Cultures of Capitalism
by Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars
(Piatkus, 1994).
The above article was originally published in In Business
magazine, July 1997.
203
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THE BEGINNING OF
THE END OF WORK
The workerless society may be much closer than we
think. 75% of the work force, in most developed coun-
tries, engage in work that is little more than simple re-
petitive tasks. Most of these jobs are vulnerable to
replacement by automation. But that’s not all – technol-
ogy is increasingly taking over tasks previously thought
to require human intelligence. Office workers and man-
agers are now under threat as corporations restructure
to take advantage of the huge productivity gains made
possible by the new technologies.
Economists have traditionally argued against the likeli-
hood of the decline of work, believing that productivity
gains produce wealth, which is used to expand markets,
thereby creating new jobs. Admittedly, this has been the
case in the past. For example, when technology began to
displace agricultural workers, a new growing sector –
manufacturing – was able to absorb those displaced.
Then, between the mid fifties and the early eighties, as
manufacturing became increasingly automated, dis-
placed factory workers were absorbed into the growing
service sector (banking, insurance, accounting, law,
airlines, retail, etc). In most modern cities today, nine
out of ten jobs are in the service sector.
As we approach the millennium, however, service sector
jobs are increasingly falling to advanced technology –
without the emergence of any new growth areas of the
scale required to absorb the redundant office workers. It
has been estimated, for example, that human secretaries
currently spend more than 45% of their time filing pa-
204
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pers, photocopying, delivering messages, posting letters

and waiting for assignments. Electronic office systems
make all of this redundant.
Sophisticated labour-saving technology is being devel-
oped at an accelerating rate. Hundreds of companies
now use computer systems to screen job applications.
One such system, called Resumix, optically scans in-
coming CVs, reads and evaluates the applicants’ details,
and makes decisions concerning applicant suitability
(field tests have shown the Resumix to be as skilled as
human personnel managers in evaluating job appli-
cants).
Voice recognition software is already being used to re-
place human customer service telephonists in many
companies. These companies face a simple choice: use
the new technology or lose competitive advantage and go
out of business. In either case job losses will occur.
In 1993 the US retail giant, Sears, cut 50,000 jobs from
its merchandising division. That same year, its sales
revenues rose by 10%. General Electric, a world leader
in electronic manufacturing, reduced its global
workforce from 400,000 in 1981 to 230,000 in 1993,
whilst tripling its sales. The tyre company, Goodyear,
cut 24,000 jobs between 1988 and 1992, and increased
productivity by 30% in the same period. During the
writing of this article, Electrolux announced they would
be eliminating 12,000 jobs over the next two years.
205
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Large layoffs such as these are becoming increasingly

common as the electronic revolution forces corporations
to ruthlessly restructure in order to stay competitive.
According to renowned management expert, Professor
Charles Handy, we are losing more jobs than we can
replace. This is inevitable, he says, because developed
countries can’t sustain the level of growth needed to
create sufficient jobs to replace those lost through tech-
nologically enhanced productivity. Automation is shed-
ding jobs faster than markets can expand to create new
jobs. Handy remarks that we all need the equivalent of
an earthquake to remind us to take nothing for granted
in the world of work and economics.
Another economic commentator who believes we need a
shock to awaken us, is Jeremy Rifkin, president of the
Foundation on Economic Trends, in Washington, DC.
According to Rifkin, “not a single world leader seems
willing to entertain the possibility that the global
economy is moving inexorably toward a shrinking labour
market with potentially profound consequences for civili-
sation”. He criticises the logic behind ‘trickle-down tech-
nology’ – the theory, held by most conventional
economists, which says that advances in technology and
productivity create falling prices, generating greater
demand, and thus leading to the creation of more jobs
than are lost.
In his book, The End of Work, Rifkin presents evidence
showing the steady rise of unemployment in most devel-
oped nations: “With demand seriously weakened by
rising unemployment and underemployment in most of
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the industrial world, the business community has

turned to extending easy consumer credit in an effort to
stimulate purchasing power.”
Consumer debt has rocketed to alarmingly high levels in
both the US and the UK, coinciding with increasing
losses of full-time jobs. Unemployment has more than
doubled in Britain since 1979, and the vast majority of
new jobs created have been temporary or part-time
(since 1992, 90% of jobs created have been temporary or
part-time). The most notable growth area during this
period has been the credit card companies, which have
experienced phenomenal success.
Technological advances continue to have the effect of
reducing the commodity value of human labour. Eco-
nomic rewards have traditionally been distributed on the
basis of contributions to production. As human contri-
butions to production reduce in significance and quan-
tity, relative to automated contributions, employment
wages will become inadequate to live on. This is already
occurring – most reports of the last few years indicate
that the low-paid are becoming financially worse off.
Every technological advance implemented in industry
effectively increases wealth – otherwise it wouldn’t be
utilised. Wealth is piling up all around us. The techno-
logical revolution which brought this wealth should be
seen as a social phenomenon – it was not created by any
one individual or group; neither is it a creature solely of
the marketplace – it rightly ‘belongs’ to everyone.
207
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In a world of decreasing demand for human labour, the

economic rewards derived from technology will need to
be distributed to people in ways that have nothing to do
with the amount of work, if any, they perform.
This article was originally published in In Business
magazine, August 1997.
THE END
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Everything They Told You Is Wrong

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Everything They Told You Is Wrong

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EVERYTHING

THEY TOLD YOU

Everything They Told You is Wrong, by Brian Dean, published

INSIDIOUS STRESS ................................... 23

WORK AND COMPETITION .......................... 41

WATCH OUT! ......................................... 63

THE SUN (3) ......................................... 82

FUTURE HISTORY OF THE

SEX ROBOTS ............................... 142

viewpoints or ideas, then pressed a button to send them

The material in this section was originally written as a

WORK AND ORIGINAL SIN

In other words, there seem to be two basic religious

ORIGINAL SIN AND TECHNOPHOBIA

THE “FREE MARKET” AND THE “NEW AGE”

THE COST OF LIVING

LAW OF THE JUNGLE

ANTI-CONSUMERIST MYTH NO. 1

to pack as much possible enjoyment into the little spare

INDULGE LAZINESS OR SUFFER APATHY

WORK ETHIC LAZINESS

EVIL EVERYWHERE SYNDROME

on absolutes. No fuzzy grey areas allowed. Either you’re

If I have faith in the positive potential of technology, that

ECONOMICS AND PSYCHOLOGY

to the functioning of the market mechanism. However,

ANTI-CONSUMERIST MYTH NO. 2

REWARDS OF THE MARKET

DEFINITION OF A GENUINE ARTIST

ANTI-CONSUMERIST MYTH NO. 3

To claim that the solution to wage-slavery lies with the

GORE, BUSH AND NADER

NOBODY IS INTELLECTUALLY IMMUNE

YOUR VALUE HIERARCHY

Our various internal values seem to be undergoing

Then you’ve got two increases in scarcity: one caused by

PRETEND FREE ENTERPRISE

WORK AND COMPETITION

MORAL ARGUMENTS OF ANTI-CONSUMERISM

I’m not claiming that moral arguments are invalid, just

material deprivation. Of course, some anti-consumerists

depression epidemics, anxiety disorders, tranquilliser

THE REAL BIO-TERRORISTS

I don’t see any moral decline. I see an ages-old recurring

ANTI-CONSUMERIST MYTH NO. 4

CONFUSING “SIMPLICITY” WITH POVERTY

What happens when emotion-triggering beliefs – such as

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

NEWSPAPERS ATTACK THE IDLE

DECONSTRUCTING CRAP TV REPORTING

VIRTUAL HUMAN CONTACT

For as long as I can remember, people have been telling

MANAGERS WANT TO WORK LESS

THE WRONG HUMAN RIGHTS?

Economic sanctions and bombs just increase fear – they

These are followed by a series of instructions: “If you

Later, after work, the vague feelings of depression and

This is obviously a hocus-pocus argument, but then our

ARGUING WITH ILL-INTENTIONED FOOLS

ARGUING WITH WELL-INTENTIONED FOOLS

TWO TYPES OF SELF-RELIANCE

Writing letters to newspapers can be very therapeutic